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Omar, himself fearing disaster, at last called to them, but jabbering among themselves in the highest spirits, each eager to set foot in the land of mystery, they took no heed of their guide's instructions. "You fools!" he cried angrily. "Climb slowly and with care. Don't jump so. We're not on a spring-board." Useless. We still went up and down like a ball at the end of a piece of elastic.
You're a spring-board for my fairy-tale, though I'd never realised it before. I shall put you in, just as you are. You'll be one of the earlier chapters. 'Every one'll skip me, then, I'm afraid. 'Not a bit, he laughed gaily; 'they'll feel you all through the book. Their minds will rest on you. You'll be a foundation. "Mother's there," they'll say, "so it's all right. This isn't nonsense.
Cortlandt is!" There is an informality about a buckboard that communicates itself at once to conduct. The exhilaration of the long spring-board, the necessity of holding on to something or somebody to prevent being tossed overboard, put occupants in a larkish mood that they might never attain in an ordinary vehicle.
The worthy fellow bounced from the elephant's neck to his rump, and vaulted like a clown on a spring-board; yet he laughed in the midst of his bouncing, and from time to time took a piece of sugar out of his pocket, and inserted it in Kiouni's trunk, who received it without in the least slackening his regular trot.
Snowball's first thought, after having partially recovered from his fright, was to examine the plank from which, like an acrobat from his spring-board, he had made that involuntary somersault.
With a shriek of joy it sprang like an acrobat from a spring-board and plunged into the hermit's bosom to the alarm of the Malay, who thought this was a furious attack. We need not say that Van der Kemp received his faithful little servant kindly, and it was quite touching to observe the monkey's intense affection for him.
That seemed to be the feeling which possessed Tom Slade as he stood upon the end of the spring-board and instead of diving cast a hurried look to where Garry Everson was talking with Roy. It all happened in a moment, the cries from the lake, Tom's hesitation, his swift look toward Roy and Garry, and his evident relief as the latter rushed to the shore and plunged into the water.
And then by one of those strange freaks of the mind that make people do the most absurd things at the most sacred times mourners laugh at funerals, and soldiers in the thick of battles long for puddings he began to say over that old doggerel which he used to repeat when shivering on the spring-board over the cold waters of the Hudson river: "One, two, three, the bumble bee, The rooster crows and away she goes!"
The pony's flippancy is as surprising as his skill. But in this unruly flippancy, in this hastiness which seems inattentive there is nevertheless a fixed and permanent idea. Hanschen paws the ground, kicks, prances, tosses his head, looks as if he cannot keep still, but never leaves his spring-board. Is he interested in the problems, does he enjoy them?
With a shriek of joy it sprang like an acrobat from a spring-board and plunged into the hermit's bosom to the alarm of the Malay, who thought this was a furious attack. We need not say that Van der Kemp received his faithful little servant kindly, and it was quite touching to observe the monkey's intense affection for him.
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