“It’s a tug, that’s what it is,” Pee-wee said; “I can see the smoke. It’s going up in a big column.”
“It’s more than a column, its a whole volume,” Westy said, looking around. “There must be books on that boat; the smoke is coming out in volumes.”
All the while we were getting nearer to the bridge and it was easier rowing, because the tide was on the turn.
Now maybe if you fellows that read this don’t live in the country where there’s a river, you won’t understand about tides and bridges and all that. So I’ll tell you how it is, because, gee, we’re used to all that, us fellows.
Jimmy Van Dorian, he lives right near the bridge in a little shanty and he’s lame and he’s a bridge tender. You don’t get much for being a bridge tender and mostly old veterans are bridge tenders. Anyway, they don’t get much out our way, because big boats don’t come up and they don’t have to open the bridge often.
When we got down to the bridge we saw that the tide was right up so we even had to duck our heads to get under, and right on the other side of the bridge was a tugboat standing facing upstream and its whistle was screeching and screeching just like a dog stands and barks when he’s mad. It seemed awful funny because it was a small tug and it made so much noise.
“It ought to be named the Pee-wee,” Westy said.
“Nobody’s paying much attention to it,” I told him.
Just as we came under the bridge we could see a big fat man, oh, Christopher, wasn’t he fat, standing up in the pilot house pulling and pulling the whistle rope, for the bridge to open. Sometimes he’d pull it very fast, just like you do with the receiver on the telephone when you’re good and mad because Central don’t answer. And it was pretty near as bad as the telephone, too, because he went on tooting and tooting and tooting and nobody paid any attention to him.