eeing it. But it was
asleep and did not hurt him. He knew the natives had been convinced
that he would not reach the ledge; but for some strange reason he
believed he should. He stopped and rested many times, and he drank
some milk he had brought in a canteen. The higher he climbed, the more
wonderful everything was, and a strange feeling began to fill him. He
said his body stopped being tired and began to feel very light. And
his load lifted itself from his heart, as if it were not his load any
more but belonged to something stronger. Even Samavia seemed to be
safe. As he went higher and higher, and looked down the abyss at the
world below, it appeared as if it were not real but only a dream he had
wakened from--only a dream."

The Rat moved restlessly.

"Perhaps he was light-headed with the fever," he suggested.

"The fever had left him, and the weakness had left him," Marco
answered. "It seemed as if he had never really been ill at all--as if
no one could be ill, because things like that were only dreams, just as
the world was."

"I wish I'd been with him! Perhaps I could have thrown these
away--down into the abyss!" And The Rat shook his crutches which
rested against the table. "I feel as if I was climbing, too. Go on."

Marco had become more absorbed than The Rat. He had lost himself in
the memory of the story.

"I felt that _I_ was climbing, when he told me," he said. "I felt as
if I were breathing in the hot flower-scents and pushing aside the big
leaves and giant ferns. There had been a rain, and they were wet and
shining with big drops, like jewels, that showered over him as he
thrust his way through and under them. And the stillness and the
height--the stillness and the height! I can't make it real to you as he
made it to me! I can't! I was there. He took me. And it was so
high--and so still--and so beautiful that I could scarcely bear it."

But the truth was, that with some vivid boy-touch he had carried his
hearer far. The Rat was deadly quiet. Even his eyes had not moved.
He spoke almost as if he were in a sort of trance. "It's real," he
said. "I'm there now. As high as you--go on--go on. I want to climb
higher."

And Marco, understanding, went on.

"The day was over and the stars were out when he reached the place were
the ledge was. He said he thought that during the last part of the
climb he never looked on the earth at all. The stars were so immense
that he could