"Your logic's not very sound," she resumed. "For example, I began to ride when I was eight years old, and you admitted you began this morning. Why did you imagine you could ride along the channel when I could not? However, you have kept me for some time and I mustn't stop."
Kit did not know what he ought to do, but he gave her the bridle and held the stirrup.
"Not that way! Keep your hand firm and your arm stiff," she said, and putting her foot on his hand, sprang to the saddle. Then she turned and smiled. "You have pluck, but you had better get back on board and change your clothes."
She started the horse, and leaning back in a strangely graceful pose, let the animal go. The pitch was steep, and the soil was loose, but they plunged down the hill. Kit knew nothing about a horse's paces; he rather thought it skated. When Olivia had gone he tried to pull out the spines, but finding that for the most part they stuck to his hands he gave it up. Then he lighted a cigarette and reflected moodily.
To begin with, it looked as if Miss Brown knew all about prickly pear, and her amused sympathy annoyed him. Then his battling her was obviously not justified, and as he watched her speed down the slopes below he frowned. He had refused to let a girl who rode like that undertake a feat he had tried; and then had fallen into the prickly pear. The thing was ridiculous. In the meantime, his skin was tingling; he must get off his clothes, and he started for Las Palmas.
Don Erminio and Kit were fishing in the bay behind the Isleta, the hill of volcanic cinders that shelters the Port of Light. Off-shore, the Trade-breeze was fresh, but in the bay the rocks broke the sea. The captain had moored his _barquillo_ to a reef and stood in a pool, with the warm, green water washing about his knees. His legs and arms were bare, as were Kit's, but they wore rawhide sandals, because where the sea-urchin grows one protects one's feet. Don Erminio carried a dripping bag, in which something moved, and a pole with a sharp hook like a salmon gaff. Kit carried a short fishing rod and was rather wet. Stepping out on a dry ledge, he looked about.
A quarter of a mile off, the long, white-topped combers rolled across the bay and then broke on the north shore of the island in a belt of foam. Mist had begun to creep down the mountain wall, and in the distance Galdar hill rose against the sunset. Farther off, across a belt of shining sea, Teneriffe's snowy peak glimmered upon a background of dull green and red. Some distance from land, a small ketch-rigged vessel steered for the Isleta. It was nearly six o'clock and would soon be dark.