I had no eyes to see with; and I doubt if there was anything to see but darkness.

I must occasionally have caught a gasp of breath, but it was quite unconscious.

And the whole forces of my mind were so consumed with losing hold and getting it again, that I could scarce have told whether I was going up or coming down.
Of a sudden I knocked against the cliff with such a thump as almost bereft me of my sense; and, as reason twinkled back, I was amazed to find that I was in a state of rest, that the face of the precipice here inclined outwards at an angle which relieved me almost wholly of the burthen of my own weight, and that one of my feet was safely planted on a ledge.

I drew one of the sweetest breaths in my experience, hugged myself against the rope, and closed my eyes in a kind of ecstasy of relief.

It occurred to me next to see how far I was advanced on my unlucky journey, a point on which I had not a shadow of a guess.