Twenty feet below the truck the foremast ground and crunched against a boss of the cliff.

Above the boss was a cleft.

He wanted to know if I would dare the leap from the mast-head into the cleft.

Sometimes the distance was a scant six feet.

At other times it was a score, for the mast reeled drunkenly to the rolling and pounding of the hull on which rested its splintered butt.
I began the climb.