CHAPTER XXXV—CEDAR
One thing I’ll tell you. If you ever see a yellow dog going east, prepare for the worst. That’s all.
We cooked some eats on the old stove in the corner of the car that night and they tasted good. After that we fixed two of the seats facing each other and sat in them, watching the rain. We jollied Pee-wee and talked about stalking and merit badges and told riddles. After that we played checkers and when we all got good and sleepy we fixed the seats into berths. The way you make a berth is to lift a seat out and lay it lengthwise across two other seats. We made five berths that way. Then we went to sleep.
Now I couldn’t see just exactly what happened because I was asleep. But I found out afterwards. I thought I heard funny kinds of noises in the night, but that old car had so many creaks in it that it was like a full orchestra whenever the wind blew.
Anyway, when I woke up in the morning and looked out of the window, I thought I was in Noah’s Ark. I was so surprised that I couldn’t do anything but just stare. We were floating down the river! That’s just as true as that I’m sitting on the window seat in my room, writing. We were floating down the river. You can ask anybody in Bridgeboro.
I gave Westy a shake and said, “Wake up and look out of the window! Hurry up! Westy!”
In a half a minute we were all staring out of the window.
Will Dawson said, “Are we dreaming or not?”
I said, “I wouldn’t say for sure that I’m awake, but I think I am. Either that or I’ve gone crazy reading ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ Look! There’s the park! We’re about half a mile down the river.”
The inventor started shouting, “Oh, good, good, good! I’m glad. Maybe we’ll go across the ocean! Will we?”
“Nothing would surprise me,” Westy said. “I hope we’ll meet Sinbad, the sailor.”
“This car wouldn’t float,” Will Dawson said.
“It wouldn’t” I said; “but it does.”
“Open the window and look out,” Westy said.
“What did I tell you about yellow dogs?” Pee-wee shouted.
“Can I be the captain?” the inventor wanted to know. “Is it a ship?”
“Either that or an insane asylum,” I said.
“Look out of the window,” Westy said. “I see what happened. Come on, let’s look out from one of the doors. I know what happened all right!”
We threw open three or four windows and looked down. Then he ran for one of the doors and looked out. The car was on something, that was sure.
“It’s an old scow,” Westy said. “Look!”
I looked down from the car door just as Westy jumped down. He said, “It’s an old scow just as sure as you live. It was part of the solid part of the trestle. See how the old tracks are broken? What—do—you—know—about—that?”
He pulled off a chip of wood and threw it up to me. “Cedar,” he said; “smell it.”
I saw just how it was. The car was standing on an old scow. The old rusty tracks were twisted and broken off and stuck out over the end. In five seconds we were all down on the deck of it, staring around.
Westy said, “Did you smell it? It’s cedar.”
And just then I remembered about something we had read in a scouts’ book about trees. Westy knows all the different kinds of wood; he’s crazy about trees. This is it, copied right out of the book:
Cedar is the wood most valuable for the hulls of vessels. When kept under water its freshness is everlasting. While other woods rot away this soft, spongy wood that yields so readily to the ax or the jack-knife, defies the decaying effects of water, its soft fiber swelling and toughening even in ordinary dampness. Time is powerless to rot it when it is in its natural element.
“What happened?” I asked him, because he seemed to know more about it than I did.
He said, “That’s easy to see. The creek flooded the marsh last night. The solid part of the trestle that we noticed was just several old scows. I guess this was the only one made of cedar. Anyway, it rose with the water and broke the old tracks and floated away. It’s lucky the car wasn’t half on one scow and half on another.”
“I’m always lucky, I am!” Pee-wee shouted.
“I guess that’s because the dog was good and yellow,” I said. “If he had been orange color, goodness only knows what might have happened.”
“Stick to this old car and you can’t go wrong,” Will Dawson said.
“You said it,” I told him.
“Now we can be pirates, hey?” the inventor said.
“Sure,” I said. “You climb up and get inside the car. The first thing you know you’ll fall in the water, and the water around here is very wet.”
“Didn’t I say stick to the car?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
“Oh, you’re just the little hero,” I told him. “If we all get drowned we’ll have to thank you.”
“Drowned? What are you talking about?” he said. “If you’re afraid——”
“Anybody that’s afraid can get out and walk,” I said. “We’ve got a private car and a private yacht too. We’re a rich patrol. I don’t think we’ll notice that crowd up at Temple Camp any more. We’ve got Submarine Sam looking like a mamma’s boy. A life on the ocean wave for us.”
“We’re going sideways,” Westy said.
“Frontways and sideways, what do we care?” I said.
“Railroad travel is all right, but ocean travel for me,” Will said.
“What are you kicking about?” Pee-wee yelled. “We’ve got both.”
“If a stray airplane would only drop on us now we’d be happy,” I said.
“You want too much,” Pee-wee shouted. “We can’t have everything.”