"We were just sitting here trying to screw up courage to do it," Betty added.
The newcomers looked at the stone, and then at the abyss.
"Well, I'll never do it!" they exclaimed simultaneously, and they contented themselves with throwing a kiss at it; and then they went away, and Betty and I, both rather pale around the gills, continued to talk of ships and shoes and sealing-wax. But I saw in her eyes that somehow or other she was going to kiss the stone.
And then a tall, thin man came up the stair, and he asked us where the stone was, and we showed him, and he looked at it, and then he glanced down into the intervening gulf, and drew back with a shudder.
"Not for me," he said. "Not—for—me!"
"We've come all the way from America," said Betty, "and we simply can't go away until we've kissed it."
"Well, I've come all the way from New Zealand, madam," said the man, "but I wouldn't think for a minute of risking my life like that."
"It used to be a good deal more dangerous than it is now," I pointed out, as much for my own benefit as for his. "They used to take people by the ankles and hold them upside down outside the battlement. I suppose they dropped somebody over, for those spikes were put there along the top to stop it. If the people who hold your legs are steady, there really isn't any danger now."
The New Zealander took another peep over into space.