And then the snow ceased for a moment and the moon shone out from the break in the clouds, and I saw that my last footprint whence the voice had made me turn was on the edge of an awesome rift that cleft the level surface on the downland, clean cut as by a sword stroke, right athwart my path.

Even in clear daylight I had hardly seen that gulf until I was on its very brink, for I could almost have leapt it, and nought marked its edge.

And in its depths I heard the crash and thunder of prisoned waves.
I do not know that I ever felt such terror as fell on me then.

It was the terror that comes of thinking what might have been, after the danger is past, and that is the worst of all.

I sank down on the snow with my knees trembling, and I clutched at the grass that I might not feel that I must even yet slip into that gulf that was so close, though there was no slope of the ground toward it.