Peter was on the point of calling to him, of remonstrating.
Then he thought better of it. He would wait a bit, and watch.

He waited and watched; and this was what he saw.

Gigi entered the tool-house, and presently brought out a
ladder, which he carried down to the riverside, and left there.
Then he returned to the tool-house, and came back bearing an
armful of planks, each perhaps a foot wide by five or six feet
long. Now he raised his ladder to the perpendicular, and let
it descend before him, so that, one extremity resting upon the
nearer bank, one attained the further, and it spanned the
flood. Finally he laid a plank lengthwise upon the hithermost
rungs, and advanced to the end of it; then another plank; then
a third: and he stood in the grounds of Ventirose.

He had improvised a bridge--a bridge that swayed upwards and
downwards more or less dizzily about the middle, if you will
--but an entirely practicable bridge, for all that. And he had
saved himself at least a good three miles, to the castle and
back, by the road.

Peter watched, and admired.

"And I asked whether he was versatile!" he muttered. "Trust an
Italian for economising labour. It looks like unwarrantable
invasion of friendly territory--but it's a dodge worth
remembering, all the same."