I had a wall behind me I could reach back with one hand and get what
we call in Scotland a 'stelf.' I knew there was a wall, but how far I
could not judge. The perpetual hammering of the stream had confused my
wits.

It was a horrible moment, but I had to risk it. I knew that if the
wall was too far back I should fall, for I had to let my weight go till
my hand fell on it. Delay would do no good, so with a prayer I flung
my right hand back, while my left hand clutched the spike.

I found the wall--it was only a foot or two beyond my reach. With a
heave I had my foot on the spike, and turning, had both hands on the
opposite wall. There I stood, straddling like a Colossus over a waste
of white waters, with the cave floor far below me in the gloom, and my
discarded axe lying close to a splash of Laputa's blood.

The spectacle made me giddy, and I had to move on or fall. The wall was
not quite perpendicular, but as far as I could see a slope of about
sixty degrees. It was ribbed and terraced pretty fully, but I could
see no ledge within reach which offered standing room. Once more I
tried the moral support of the rope, and as well as I could dropped a
noose on the spike which might hold me if I fell. Then I boldly
embarked on a hand traverse, pulling myself along a little ledge till I
was right in the angle of the fall. Here, happily, the water was
shallower and less violent, and with my legs up to the knees in foam I
managed to scramble into a kind of corner. Now at last I was on the
wall of the gully, and above the cave. I had achieved by amazing luck
one of the most difficult of all mountaineering operations. I had got
out of a cave to the wall above.

My troubles were by no means over, for I found the cliff most difficult
to climb. The great rush of the stream dizzied my brain, the spray
made the rock damp, and the slope steepened as I advanced. At one
overhang my shoulder was almost in the water again. All this time I
was climbing doggedly, with terror somewhere in my soul, and hope
lighting but a feeble lamp. I was very distrustful of my body, for I
knew that at any moment my weakness might return. The fever of three
days of peril and stress is not allayed by one night's rest.

By this time I was high enough to see that the river came out of the
ground about fifty feet short of the lip of the gully, and some ten
feet beyond where I stood. Above the hole whence the waters issued was
a loose slop