“He won’t come here!” said Bunny. “He can’t jump over the bushes, Sue.”
The man on the back of the horse seemed either frightened or excited. He was now leaning forward, his arms around the neck of the animal, and he cried:
“Avast there! Belay! Drop your anchor! Pull up at the dock! I want to go ashore!”
Bunny thought this was a funny way to talk to a horse.
“He should say ‘whoa’ or ‘back’ to him,” thought Bunny. “He’s talking just like Bunker Blue or one of the sailors down at daddy’s dock.”
But neither Bunny Brown nor his sister Sue had time to think much more or do much more. All of a sudden the horse came up on the sidewalk near the Brown gate. Then, just outside the hedge of bushes, the horse came to a sudden stop.
Off his back shot the man, up into the air, over the bushes in a curve, and then he fell to the ground with a groan.
“Oh! Oh!” cried Bunny’s sister Sue.
CHAPTER II
A STRANGE STORY
Bunny Brown was as much excited and frightened as his sister, but he did not scream and call out as Sue did. Instead, Bunny looked at the man, lying so still and quiet on the grass. At first the little boy thought the rider of the runaway horse had been killed when he had been flung in such a queer way over the fence.