He drew some more arrows, with Dick looking solemnly on, and the result was that Will’s sketch of the wind’s action against a cliff was something like the following arrangement of lines and arrows, which illustrate a curious phenomenon of nature, easily noticeable during a gale of wind at the edge of some perpendicular cliff.
Dick felt disposed to dispute his friend’s scientific reasoning; but Will showed him by throwing his handkerchief down from the edge of the cliff, when it was caught by the gale before it had gone down a dozen feet, and whisked up above their heads and then away over the land.
A handful of grass was treated the same, and then Dick sent down his own handkerchief, which went down twice as far as Will’s before the wind took it and blew it right into a crevice in the face of the cliff, where it stuck fast.
“There’s a go,” cried Dick. “Oh! I say, how can we get it?”
Will went to the edge of the cliff and looked over before shaking his head.
“We can’t get it now,” he said. “I’ll ask Josh to come with a rope when the wind’s gone down, and he’ll lower me over.”
“What—down there—with a rope?” said Dick, changing colour. “No, don’t.”
“Why not?” said Will. “That’s nothing to going down a mine-shaft.”
Dick shuddered.
“Or going down the cliff after eggs as I do sometimes. We have gentlemen here now and then who collect eggs, and I’ve been down after them often in places where you can’t climb.”