"It's not far now," he said, a little while after, "to the lower end of the city and to the Battery. I'll take a look at the Battery before I go back to the Hotel Dantzic."
Taller and more majestic grew the buildings as he went on, but he was not now so dazed and confused as he had been in the morning.
"Here is Trinity Church, again," he said. "I remember about that. And that's Wall Street. I'll see that as I come back; but now I'll go right along and see the Battery. Of course there isn't any battery there, but Mr. Guilderaufenberg said that from it I could see the fort on Governor's Island."
Jack did not see much of the Battery, for he followed the left-hand sidewalk at the Bowling Green, where Broadway turns into Whitehall Street. He had so long been staring at great buildings whose very height made him dizzy, that he was glad to see beside them some which looked small and old.
"I'll find my way without asking," he remarked to himself. "I'm pretty near the end now. There are some gates, and one of them is open. I'll walk right in behind that carriage. That must be the gate to the Battery."
The place he was really looking for was at some distance to the right, and the carriage he was following so confidently, had a very different destination.
The wide gateway was guarded by watchful men, not to mention two policemen, and they would have caught and stopped any boy who had knowingly tried to do what Jack did so innocently. Their backs must have been turned, for the carriage passed in, and so did Jack, without any one's trying to stop him. He was as bold as a lion about it, because he did not know any better. A number of people were at the same time crowding through a narrower gateway at one side, and they may have distracted the attention of the gatemen.
"I'd just as lief go in at the wagon-gate," said Jack, and he did not notice that each one stopped and paid something before going through. Jack went on behind the carriage. The carriage crossed what seemed to Jack a kind of bridge housed over. Nobody but a boy straight from Crofield could have gone so far as that without suspecting something; but the carriage stopped behind a line of other vehicles, and Jack walked unconcernedly past them.
"Jingo!" he suddenly exclaimed. "What's this? I do believe the end of this street is moving!"
He bounded forward, much startled by a thing so strange and unaccountable, and in a moment more he was looking out upon a great expanse of water, dotted here and there with canal-boats, ships, and steamers.