And that’s the way it was all the way down. Cracky, but we had Pee-wee so crazy that he’d bail up a can of water out of one end of the boat and empty it in the other end.
“What’s the difference whether it’s inside or outside?” Westy said, “as long as it’s there. I bet there’s a lot of canned salmon in this river.”
“Canned what?” Pee-wee shouted.
“Keep on bailing,” I said; “canned salmon is what he said, but I think there are more pickled herrings. There’s lots of pickled herrings in the Hudson, I know that.”
“You mean smoked herring,” Westy said, all the while rowing and looking around very sober like at me.
Oh, boy, didn’t Pee-wee open his eyes and stare! He didn’t know whether to take it for a joke or not—we were so serious.
“I suppose it’s on account of the smoke from the big Hudson River boats,” I said, “just the same as Oyster Bay.”
“What about Oyster Bay?” Pee-wee shouted.
“When the water gets all stewed up in rough weather, they get stewed oysters.”
“Not always,” Westy said.