"It'd be a shame to miss a night like this." Again the lightning rent the sky, and the whole great outline of the Spear Point was revealed in one awful second of intolerable radiance.
Adam's keen eye chanced to be upon it, and he saw it in such detail as the strongest sunlight could never have achieved.

The brightness dazzled, almost shocked him, but there was something besides the brightness that sent an odd sensation through him--a curious, sick feeling as if he had suddenly received a blow between the shoulders.

For in that fraction of time he had seen something which reason, clamouring against the evidence of his senses, declared to be the impossible.

He had seen a human figure--the figure of his son--clinging to the naked face of the rock, hanging between sea and sky where scarcely a bird could have found foothold, while something--a grey, indistinguishable burden--hung limp across his shoulder, weighing him down.
The thunder was still rolling around him when with a great shake Adam pulled himself together.
"I'm dreaming!" he told himself angrily.

"A man couldn't ever climb the Spear Point, let alone live on a ledge that wouldn't harbour a sea-gull if he did.