They looked out on it with hungry eyes for a full hour without moving, and they saw a sight which was more extraordinary than madness itself.
Basil Grant addressed a few questions to the madman, without succeeding in making him do anything but continue to caper, and when he had done this slowly took a red note-book out of one pocket and a large pencil out of another.
He began hurriedly to scribble notes.

When the lunatic skipped away from him he would walk a few yards in pursuit, stop, and make notes again.
Thus they followed each other round and round the foolish circle of turf, the one writing in pencil with the face of a man working out a problem, the other leaping and playing like a child.
After about three-quarters of an hour of this imbecile scene, Grant put the pencil in his pocket, but kept the note-book open in his hand, and walking round the mad professor, planted himself directly in front of him.
Then occurred something that even those already used to that wild morning had not anticipated or dreamed.

The professor, on finding Basil in front of him, stared with a blank benignity for a few seconds, and then drew up his left leg and hung it bent in the attitude that his sister had described as being the first of all his antics.

And the moment he had done it Basil Grant lifted his own leg and held it out rigid before him, confronting Chadd with the flat sole of his boot.

The professor dropped his bent leg, and swinging his weight on to it kicked out the other behind, like a man swimming.