The next step was full of peril. With his left foot advanced, Coppinger felt he had reached the shale. He kicked into it, and kicked away an avalanche of loose flakes that slid over the edge. But he drove his foot deep into the slope, and rammed a dent into which he could fix the right foot when drawn after it.
"For death!"
Then he crept along upon the shale.
He could not see the star now. His sweat, rolling off his brow, had run over his eyelids and charged the lashes with tears. In partial blindness he essayed the next step.
"For life!"
Then he breathed more freely. His foot was on the grass.
The passage of extreme danger was over. From the point now reached the ledge widened, and Coppinger was able to creep onward with less stress laid on the fractured bones. The anguish of expectation of death was lightened; and as it lightened nature began to assert herself. His teeth chattered as in an ague fit, and his breath came in sobs.
In ten minutes he had attained the summit—he was on the down above the cliffs.
"Judith," said he, and he kissed her cheeks and brow and hair. "For life—for death—mine, only mine."
