_It seems that the unhappy man has been in that desperate position a long time. A considerable crowd has already collected, extremely varied in composition. There are venders of cold drinks; there is a whole little bar behind which the bartender skips about out of breath and perspiring--he has more on his hands than he can attend to; there are peddlers selling picture postal cards, coral beads, souvenirs, and all sorts of trash. One fellow is stubbornly trying to dispose of a tortoise-shell comb, which is really not tortoise-shell. Tourists keep pouring in from all sides, attracted by the report that a catastrophe is impending--Englishmen, Americans, Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, Italians, etc., with all their peculiar national traits of character, manner and dress. Nearly all carry alpenstocks, field-glasses and cameras. The conversation is in different languages, all of which, for the convenience of the reader, we shall translate into English._ _At the foot of the rock where the unknown man is to fall, two policemen are chasing the children away and partitioning off a space, drawing a rope around short stakes stuck in the ground. It is noisy and jolly._] POLICEMAN. Get away, you loafer! The man'll fall on your head and then your mother and father will be making a hullabaloo about it. BOY. Will he fall here? POLICEMAN. Yes, here. BOY. Suppose he drops farther? SECOND POLICEMAN. The boy is right. He may get desperate and jump, land beyond the rope and hit some people in the crowd. I guess he weighs at least about two hundred pounds. FIRST POLICEMAN. Move on, move on, you! Where are you going? Is that your daughter, lady? Please take her away! The young man will soon fall. LADY. Soon? Did you say he is going to fall soon? Oh, heavens, and my husband's not here! LITTLE GIRL. He's in the café, mamma. LADY [_desperately_]. Yes, of course. He's always in the café. Go call him, Nellie. Tell him the man will soon drop. Hurry! Hurry! VOICES. Waiter!--Garçon--Kellner--Three beers out here!--No beer?--What?--Say, that's a fine bar--We'll have some in a moment--Hurry up--Waiter!--Waiter!--Garçon! FIRST POLICEMAN. Say, boy, you're here again? BOY. I wanted to take the stone away. POLICEMAN. What for? BOY. So he shouldn't get hurt so badly when he falls. SECOND POLICEMAN. The boy is right. We ought to remove the stone. We ought to clear the place altogether. Isn't there any sawdust or sand about? [_Two English tourists enter. They look at the unknown man through field-glasses and exchange remarks._] FIRST TOURIST. He's young. SECOND TOURIST. How old? FIRST TOURIST. Twenty-eight. SECOND TOURIST. Twenty-six. Fright has made him look older. FIRST TOURIST. How much will you bet? SECOND TOURIST. Ten to a hundred. Put it down. FIRST TOURIST [_writing in his notebook. To the policeman_]. How did he get up there? Why don't they take him off?