A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, October 1950 — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 A. MERRITYT’S FANTASY ders, made the muscles flex, relax, and draw; bent his legs and _ straightened them; then, in a wild burst of exultation, cried again: “It is! No dream—no dream! Reality !” Abroad across the sea he looked, alice | now a tiny laten-sail or two, outcreeping, bespoke the early morning fisher fleet just starting from the harbor to eastward. The heave and murmur of that always-summer ocean called him more strongly than be- fore. Its fascination grew irresistible. Already in imagination he could feel the cool embraces of the surf, the buoyant, vigorous thrust and parry of the clashing breakers, the jetting spray, the tang of brine. Again he peered across the rail, in the now strengthening light, judging if any way there were to reach the bottom of that dizzying cliff. His sharpened vision suddenly descried a tiny, broken path which, clinging to the face of the perpendicular rock, wound out of saght around its farther curves. Here it appeared, there vanished, fur- ther on again became once more visible. Whether it led to the bottom, whether it was continuous or broken by impassable gaps, he could not tell. He had no means even of knowing that it was a path for human feet ; of surety that, once half-way down, it might not crumble under him and hurl him headlong down, down, to mangled annihilation. Yet all this counted not with him. Again within, his heart thrilled and burned the strong, adventurous spirit, the lure of the unknown, the perilous, which for long years had lain buried and forgotten. And, already determined, he left the summer-house. Along the brow of the cliff he quested in the dawn, seeking the embouchure of the tiny path. Far down toward the eastern boundary wall of the estate, beyond a mulberry thicket and a patch of barren, boulder- strewn ground, he discovered it—a mere cleft in the rock, long since unused by even the feet of the hardy native goats. It gave him pause a moment; but with a smile, an impatient snapping of the fingers, he set foot upon the perilous de- scent. Moment by moment, though not since the fruit and wine brought him in his room by the Lombard had he eaten anything, the strength of manhood was returning in him. He wrenched a sapling from its rooted hold upon the cliff-edge, broke it with naked hands to a convenient length, and—thus supplied with an alpen- stock—started down. For a few minutes all went well. Un- dizzied by the vast emptiness below him, unterrified by the uncertain footing and by the jagged towers of the cliff-wall that shot up, overhanging, at his right hand, down, down, down he kept. Eom time to time he lashed out gaily with his stick at a flaunting red or yellow bloom clinging upon the lip of the abyss. The beheaded flower, spinning away from his sight, amused him. The task of picking his dangerous way grati- fied his sense of exuberant vitality, de- lighted him. Long a brain-worker and an invalid, unused—since the far-distant days of his athletic youth—to any physical exertion, now he felt reviving in him a thousand forgotten satisfactions in the use of muscle, nerve, and skill. The daring judgment of every step, the firm hold of his clutching fingers on the cliff, the clear-headed defhance of the noth- ingness below him, and of the jagged, waiting rocks, were like oil upon the fire of his great excitement. In this unusual, needless peril, the new vitality that, like a living flame, was grow- ing in and through him found vent. And, now clinging to a jut of the volcanic gray- stone, now peering into the vague depths, again leaping a break in the path, crawling on all-fours across some narrow, crum- bling causeway flushing up a gull from its rocky nest, or letting himself slide bodily from ledge to ledge, so great a happiness thrilled him that song welled to his lips. Re-echoing from the rugged face of rock, out rolled that devil-may-care student melody from “Faust”? summing up in long forgotten words the cycle of the joys of youth: Good beer, a maiden smartly dressed. Stinging tobacco—these I love the best! Startled by the sound of his own voice, he stopped suddenly with a strange cry. ““Why—what’s that?” he exclaimed. (C(O) nn) (C 6)(0)©) Ss (C(O)