In a moment Hands and Michael were half sliding, half climbing down a cliff. The lower they went, the faster they travelled and soon they were sliding all the way, because they had to guard their faces against the brambles that twined above them.
“Good Lord!” gasped Michael, as he bumped down a sheer ten-feet of loose earth. “I’m getting jolly bumped. Look out, Hands, you kicked my neck, you ass.”
“I can’t help it,” gasped Hands. “I’m absolutely slipping, and if I try to catch hold, I scratch myself.”
They were sliding so fast that the only thing to do was to laugh and give way. So, with shouts and laughter and bumps and jolts and the pushing of loose stones and earth before them, Michael and Hands came with a run to the bottom of the cliff and landed at last on soft sea-sand.
“By gum,” said Michael, “we’re right on the beach. What a rag!”
The two boys looked back to the scene of their descent. It was a high cliff covered with shrubs and brambles, apparently unassailable. Before them was the sea, pale blue and gold, and to the right and to the left were the flat lonely sands. They ran, shouting with excitement, towards the rippling tide. The sand-hoppers buzzed about their ankles: Hands tripped over a jelly-fish and fell into several others: sea-gulls swooped above them, crying continually.
“It’s like Robinson Crusoe,” Michael declared.
He was mad with the exhilaration of possession. He owned these sands.
“Oh, young Hands fell down on the sands,” he cried, bursting into uncontrollable laughter at the absurdity of the rhyme. Then he found razor-shells and waved his arms triumphantly. He found, too, wine-stained shells and rosy shells and great purple mussels. He and Hands took off their shoes and stockings and ran through the limpid water that sparkled with gold and tempted them to wade for ever ankle deep. They reached a broken mass of rock which would obviously be surrounded by water at high tide; they clambered up to the summit and found there grass and rabbits’ holes.
“It’s a real island,” said Michael. “It is! I say, Hands, this is our island. We discovered it. Bags I, we keep it.”