I looked up: there was nothing above me but the blackness of the night and the fog.

I craned timidly forward and looked down.

There, upon a floor of darkness, I beheld a certain pattern of hazy lights, some of them aligned as in thoroughfares, others standing apart as in solitary houses; and before I could well realise it, or had in the least estimated my distance, a wave of nausea and vertigo warned me to lie back and close my eyes.

In this situation I had really but the one wish, and that was: something else to think of! Strange to say, I got it: a veil was torn from my mind, and I saw what a fool I was--what fools we had all been--and that I had no business to be thus dangling between earth and heaven by my arms.

The only thing to have done was to have attached me to a rope and lowered me, and I had never the wit to see it till that moment! I filled my lungs, got a good hold on my rope, and once more launched myself on the descent.