"'If wishes were horses'--you know the old saying, Master Gordon," responded Groves. "I think you'd be sorry enough after getting up five hundred feet into the air, to feel that a puff of wind might tumble you over, and make the coming down a trifle quicker, and less agreeable, than the going up."
"It was the going up, and not the coming down that I meant," rejoined Aleck, "though I have heard papa say that coming down from a great height does not hurt."
"Ugh!" I ejaculated, "you wouldn't have me believe that. Just a little while before you came to us I had a bad fall off the table. I can tell you it hurt!"
"I've fallen, too, off a tree," answered my cousin, not to be outdone, for boys are wont to brag of their honourable scars, "and it hurt a great deal, but I mean falling from higher still. One of the sailors I talked to on board ship had fallen from a mast, and he told me that he went over and over; the first time he went over seemed quite a long time, and between that and the second time he seemed to remember almost everything he had ever cared about much in all his life, but after the second going over he never knew anything until he found himself lying in the cabin, and the doctor setting his arm, which had been broken in the fall, though he never felt it."
"I'll be bound he felt it enough when the doctor got to work upon him," remarked George.
"Yes; but he didn't feel it when it broke," returned Aleck, who wished to establish his point.
By this time the stately kite was lying on the grass. I lifted it up, and we started in procession for the Cove, Aleck acting train-bearer to the long tail, and winding it up as he went along; and Groves and Ralph carrying the hamper.
Another moment, and we were in sight of the Cove. My heart was beating violently, and I felt the crimson flush mount suddenly to my face, and then leave it again; but no one else noticed it, and as yet I could not see to the harbour-bar, so as to know whether the ship were safe or not. The little creek in which it had been left was, however, full in view, and Aleck instantly observed that his new treasure was not there.
But there was an entire absence of uneasiness in his tone, as he quietly remarked,--