Perhaps you wonder why he did not swim across. The reason was that he
could not swim. He wanted to know how to swim, but no one on the
island knew the way except the ducks, and they are so stupid. They
were quite willing to teach him, but all they could say about it was,
"You sit down on the top of the water in this way, and then you kick
out like that." Peter tried it often, but always before he could kick
out he sank. What he really needed to know was how you sit on the
water without sinking, and they said it was quite impossible to
explain such an easy thing as that. Occasionally swans touched on the
island, and he would give them all his day's food and then ask them
how they sat on the water, but as soon as he had no more to give them
the hateful things hissed at him and sailed away.

Once he really thought he had discovered a way of reaching the
Gardens. A wonderful white thing, like a runaway newspaper, floated
high over the island and then tumbled, rolling over and over after the
manner of a bird that has broken its wing. Peter was so frightened
that he hid, but the birds told him it was only a kite, and what a
kite is, and that it must have tugged its string out of a boy's hand,
and soared away. After that they laughed at Peter for being so fond
of the kite, he loved it so much that he even slept with one hand on
it, and I think this was pathetic and pretty, for the reason he loved
it was because it had belonged to a real boy.

To the birds this was a very poor reason, but the older ones felt
grateful to him at this time because he had nursed a number of
fledglings through the German measles, and they offered to show him
how birds fly a kite. So six of them took the end of the string in
their beaks and flew away with it; and to his amazement it flew after