“Again?” I said. “Excuse me while I laugh. We’ve got the babes in the woods beaten twenty-eleven ways. I wish we had a compass.”
“I wouldn’t believe one if you had it,” Pee-wee shouted.
“Let’s hustle and follow the smoke while it’s still going up,” Warde said.
“It’s dying down!” Pee-wee shouted.
“Let it die,” I said. “I’m going to find out what happened. If the earth is off its axis we ought to know it.”
“We’ll have to hike to the North Pole,” Hervey said.
“Oh sure, start off,” I told him; “we’ll follow you.”
“I want to know how a bee-line got bent,” Bert said.
“I never knew Temple Camp to do such a thing before as long as I’ve known it,” I said. “I’m surprised at Temple Camp. I don’t understand it. It’s trying to escape us.”
“We’ll foil it yet,” Hervey said. “When it comes to hide-and-seek that’s my middle name. I intend to go to Temple Camp now just for spite. We’ll each go in a different direction and surround it and close in on it. What do you say?”