There did not seem to me the slightest use in making the attempt, or the
smallest hope of reaching the top, or the least expectation of finding
anything worth finding. I hated everything I had ever seen or known;
recollections of old lives and of the quiet garden I had left came upon
me with a sort of mental nausea. This was very different from the
amiable and easy-going treatment I had expected. Yet I did struggle on,
with a hideous faintness and weariness--but would it never stop? It
seemed like years to me, my hands frozen and wetted by snow and dripping
water, my feet bruised and wounded by sharp stones, my garments
strangely torn and rent, with stains of blood showing through in places.
Still the hideous business continued, but progress was never quite
impossible. At one place I found the rocks wholly impassable, and
choosing the broader of two ledges which ran left and right, I worked
out along the cliff, only to find that the ledge ran into the
precipices, and I had to retrace my steps, if the shuffling motions I
made could be so called. Then I took the harder of the two, which
zigzagged backwards and forwards across the rocks.
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