He listened to the horses stamping about in their stalls, and chewing their food. Then there were more noises, and the sound of men calling: “Gid-dap there!” Next came the pounding of horses’ hoofs on wooden planks, and the voices of men shouting.
“What in the world is going on?” thought Lightfoot.
“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:
“I don’t know,” was the answer. “It sounded as if somebody were in the hold.”
“That’s just where I am,” said Lightfoot.
“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.”
“You had better wait and see,” was the answer.
“I wish I could come in your stable,” said Lightfoot. “I would not take up much room.”
“You would be welcome,” said a horse, “but there is no way for you to get in unless you can get out of the hold, on to the towpath and come down the plank. Some day maybe you can do that.”
“I hope so,” said Lightfoot, who was now getting very hungry.
And the next thing Lightfoot knew was that the boat began slowly to move. It had started up the canal. Lightfoot was on a voyage, though where he was going he did not know.
Lightfoot, down in the hold of the canal boat, felt the craft slipping through the water easily. He was being carried with it.
“Well, this is not so bad, for a start,” thought the goat. “It is much easier than riding in a wagon, as I once did.”