“Hello, in there, you horses. What is going on, if you please?” he called.
He could hear that the horses stopped chewing their oats; and one said to another:
“What is that?”
“I don’t know,” was the answer. “It sounded as if somebody were in the hold.”
“That’s just where I am,” said Lightfoot.
“Who are you?” asked a horse.
“Lightfoot, the leaping goat,” was the answer. And then Lightfoot told something of himself and the adventures he had had so far—of why he ran away from the park, and, to get away from the boys, of having jumped down into the boat.
“Well, if you’re there,” said a horse on the other side of the wall, “you’re likely to stay for some time. It is too high for you to jump out.”
“I see it is,” answered Lightfoot, “even though I am called the leaping goat. But what will happen to me?”
“You are going on a voyage now,” was the answer of the horse. “That noise you heard was the captain leading some of the horses out of our stable, here on the boat, over a board, called a gangway, to the canal towpath. Very soon they will begin to pull the boat along the canal, and, after a while, it will be our turn. You are going on a voyage, Lightfoot.”