Evidently this decided him that he was really free and that his great
wings would bear him. He leaped into the air again, spreading his wings,
and wheeled to go over the stern of the steamship. The spread of his
wings when he flapped them was greater than most of the onlookers had
supposed.
"Oh! Oh! Look out, Laddie!" shouted Rose.
Her warning came too late. The end of the great pinion swept Laddie off
his feet! He went rolling across the deck, screaming lustily.
"Oh! I'm going overboard! Daddy!" he cried.
But it was Russ who grabbed him and stood him on his feet again.
"You're not going overboard at all," said the older brother. "You
couldn't. You'd have to climb over the rail to do it."
"We-ell!" breathed Laddie. "It's a wonder he didn't take me right with
him!"
Then he, like everybody else, became interested in the passage of the
great bird as it mounted skyward. It went up in a long slant at first,
and then began to spiral upward, right toward the sun, and presently was
out of sight.
"It can look the sun straight in the face," said Daddy Bunker. "Which is
something we cannot do."
"No wonder its eye is red, then," said Rose.
"I guess it's sunburnt," said Margy. "I got sunburnt at Captain Ben's."
That night they docked at Savannah and went to a hotel in two taxicabs,
for one would not hold all the Bunkers and their baggage too.
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