“Wait till I look at my compass,” Pee-wee said.
Extracting this from where it had been dangling in the folds of limp, wet bunting, Pee-wee found to his consternation that already the cheap tin case had little specks of fresh rust on it. And worse than that the paper dial within curled up like a dried leaf. The all pervading, insinuating fog seemed to have penetrated even this trusty little guide. With the aid of his trusty flashlight, Pee-wee saw the havoc wrought upon the delicately balanced needle. The glue behind the dial had melted and oozed up and gummed the pivot. Even the magnetic pole (which Pee-wee had always regarded as his friend, and which showed him the way home from school) was helpless now, or thoroughly embarrassed by glue.
“Wait till I hold up my finger,” Pee-wee said.
He held up his finger, but even his potent imagination could not fancy the wind blowing from any particular quarter. There was no wind, only a clammy, stifling calm. And if there had been any wind it is hard to say how that would have helped him.
Simon was disinclined to try to turn their lumbering caravan in that narrow road, particularly since one direction seemed as good as another now.
“We’ll just keep going,” he said, “and maybe we’ll come to some house or something that I know. It must be late because I’m getting hungry.”
“It’s about—it’s—it’s twenty minutes to nine,” Pee-wee said. “That’s what it is by my appetite.” He could tell time at least and that was fortunate.
“If there wasn’t a fog I could tell the way home by the stars,” Pee-wee announced.
“If there wasn’t a fog I could get home without looking at the stars,” said simple Simon.
“You’re supposed to go by the stars if you’re a scout,” Pee-wee said disdainfully.