With one arm round the upright to prevent the sag of rope from dragging him
over prematurely, he essayed a final survey.
Either the murk deceived or Lanyard had judged shrewdly. His feet were on
an approximate level with the coping round the roof, and he stood about as
far from the upper girder to which the rope was hitched as that was distant
from the coping.
One look up and round at those louring skies, duskily flushed by subdued
city lights: with no more ceremony Lanyard released the upright and
committed his body to space.
If the downward sweep was breathless, what followed was breath-taking:
once past the nadir of that giant swing, he was borne upward by an impetus
steadily and sensibly slackening.
Instant followed leaden-winged instant while the wall, looming like
a mountainside, seemed to be toppling, insensately bent upon his
annihilation; even so his momentum, decreasing with frightful swiftness,
seemed possessed of demoniac desire to frustrate him.
After an age-long agony of doubt it became evident he was not destined
to crash into the wall, but not that he was to gain the coping: through
fractions of a second hideously protracted this last drew near, nearer,
slowly, ever more slowly.
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