For this I must back myself over the edge of it, and cling with body and legs in air while I judged my fall into the next.

To do this thirty times or so in succession without mistake was past hoping for: there were at least thirty crockets to be manoeuvred, and a single miscalculation would send me spinning backwards to my fate.

Above all, I had not the strength for it.
So I sat considering for a while; not terrified, but with a brain exceedingly blank and hopeless.

It never occurred to me that, if I sat still and held on, steeplejacks would be summoned and ladders brought to me; and I am glad that it did not, for this would have taken hours, and I know now that I could not have held out for half an hour inactive.

But another thought came.