What is there in humanity, certainly in youthful humanity, that if it can attain its end in two ways, one quiet and decorous, the other difficult and dangerous, is certain to choose the latter?
"We must manage to get you to the Bellows, it is such a curious sight," said my girls as they returned from it. "Don't be frightened—come along!"
By dint of pulling, pushing, and the help of stick and arm, I came: stood watching the spout of water which, in certain conditions of the tide, forces itself through a tiny fissure in the rock with a great roar, and joined in the childish delight of waiting, minute by minute, for the biggest spout, the loudest roar.
But Asparagus Island (where was no asparagus at all) I totally declined. Not being a goat or a chamois, I contented myself with sitting where I could gain the best view of the almost invisible path by which my adventurous young "kids" disappeared. Happily they had both steady heads and cool nerves; they were neither rash nor unconscientious. I knew they would come back as soon as they could. So I waited patiently, contemplating a fellow-victim who seemed worse off than myself; a benign-looking clergyman, who kept walking up and down the soppy sands, and shouting at intervals to two young people, a man and a woman, who appeared to be crawling like flies along the face of the rock towards another rock, with a yawning cave and a wide fissure between.
"Don't attempt it!" the clergyman cried at the top of his voice. "That's the Devil's Throat. She'll never manage it. Come down. Do make her come down."
"Your young people seem rather venturesome," said I sympathetically.
THE STEEPLE ROCK, KYNANCE COVE.
"Not my young people," was the dignified answer. "My girls are up there, on Asparagus Rock, which is easy enough climbing. They promised not to go farther, and they never disobey their mother and me. But those two! I declare he is taking her to the most dangerous part, that rock where you have to jump—a good jump it is, and if you miss your footing you are done for, you go right into the boiling waves below. Well, it's no business of mine; she is his own property; he is engaged to her, but"—