Fountain
In
the middle of a pond there was a fountain. I picked pebbles from the
side of a road and tried to hit the centre of the fountain. The area
which sprayed the water was not big, hardly two centimetres by its
diameter. This was just below the surface, some twenty metres from
the road where I stood.
My
accuracy was surprisingly good. I hit the nozzle on the first try
so that the showering decreased by half. On my second try I was able
to stop the spouting almost completely. The water sprayed only a half
a metre above the surface.
'Let
me try as well,' my colleague said. He was an English man, some fifteen
years older than I was. So far he had been tossing big boulders near
the water's edge, but now he, too, wanted to hit the fountain.
'Good
shot,' I said, as my friend hit the fountain on his first try. The
water stopped flowing on the surface, even if I could see that it
still formed interesting figures underwater.
The
pond was not deep. I reasoned that it would be better to stop throwing
pebbles before the bottom was filled with stones. My colleague continued
slinging rocks, however, until he noticed something shimmering below
the surface. He took off his shoes and jacket and walked to the water's
edge. Then he suddenly dove in the shallow water. The plunge seemed
dangerous but luckily he didn't dive so deep as to hit the bottom.
I hadn't expected my colleague to jump into the water, so I followed
with interest as he moved underwater stopping every now and then to
pick something from the bottom and then continuing his dive to the
right bank of the pond.
Eventually
he rose from the water and showed me the items he had picked up. 'These
pieces of glass can be used as a mirror,' he explained. 'When you
position them to a right angle towards the sun, you can project light
to any direction you want.'
It
was not clear to me why it was so important to fetch the glass from
the bottom of the pond, but I didn't question my colleague. It was
time to go back, so I asked, 'Are you coming to the office with your
wet clothes on, or are you going to get changed first?' My colleague
tried to squeeze the excess water from his sleeves. 'I'm popping home
to change my clothes,' he replied. This seemed sensible to me as well.
