Save for this, it was, right across the brown, rose-strewn carpet, naked country.

Truly a perilous business.

As he sat there and looked at it, his heart a little misgave him; in this strange, new world into which he had been so roughly hustled, amongst a horde of alarming and painful occurrences, he had discovered nothing so disconcerting as that sudden giving of the knees, that rising of the floor to meet you, the collapse, the pain, and above all the disgrace.

Moreover, let him fail now, and it meant, in short,--banishment--banishment and then darkness.
There were risks.

It was the most perilous thing that, in this new country, he had yet attempted, but attempt it he would....