“I’ve got an inspiration!” shouted Pee-wee. “Let’s hike down to Catskill and buy a lot of stuff—jaw breakers, those are my favorite things because they last longer and you get four for a cent. And we’ll have some sodas, too. Come ahead, get your staff and push out from shore.”
He wet his finger and held it up to determine the direction of the breeze. The side of his finger that felt the first chill settled this matter definitely. Never in all Pee-wee’s life had it settled it correctly, but that made not the slightest difference to him. His faith was boundless.
“It’s blowing over toward the camp,” he said; “it’s due east. We’ll drift over in about five minutes. Come ahead, push. Push as hard as you can.”
CHAPTER XXVI—MAROONED
“All the things you said made me hungry,” Willie Rivers shyly confessed. “The way you talked made me hungry.”
“Me too,” said Howard.
The gallant bark Hop-toad was now clear of the shore and sailing majestically.
“It’s going in a direction south by south!” shouted Pee-wee, frantically holding up his finger, as if to reprove the deceiving breeze. “I can tell because it’s going the other way from the way I thought it would go.”
“Won’t we get any dinner?” Willie asked.
“How am I to blame if the breeze doesn’t do like it says it’s going to do?” Pee-wee demanded. “If we held a rag up somebody might think it was a flag of truce.”