“Or yon,” I said. “It’s settled. The rules will be very simple. We’ll go where the wind goes. We’ll return when we get back. We won’t take anything with us, not even any ideas. The only excess baggage that we carry will be Pee-wee.”
Dub said, “The object of the expedition is to find out where the wind goes—to stalk it.”
I said, “Sure, and to find out what it does when it gets there and if so where. Am I right?”
“Absolutely, unanimously,” said Egg Sandwich.
CHAPTER IV
THE QUITTER
Now pretty soon it’s going to start. The next morning we went in front of Administration Shack and everybody was there laughing at us. I made a kind of a speech. I said, “We, the big four, I mean the big three and a half, on account of Pee-wee, do solemnly pledge our words that we will go the way the wind blows till five o’clock to-night, because then we’ll have to come home on account of supper. The solemn pledge only lasts till five o’clock.”
One Scout said, “Why don’t you make it last for the rest of the season? If you got back by Labor Day that would be all right. What’s your hurry?”
I said, “We will be at camp-fire to-night with much scientific information to impart about the winds because wherever they go, we’re going to follow them with Scout Harris’ famous windmeter, patent not applied for.”
So then I held up that crazy thing and the confetti all blew out pointing into the woods up in back of the camp. That was west. The cricket escaped out of the bottle—I guess he decided he didn’t want to go. I dumped the lightning bug out, too. So then we started up into the woods and every now and then we held up the windmeter to make sure we were going right. Oh boy, we were having a peachy hike. It was like a regular, sensible hike, even. Pretty soon I knew we were coming to Bagley’s Green, that’s a village. You go through the woods about two miles and then you come to the railroad cut and then Bagley’s Green.
Now I’ll tell you how it was. When we started out it was early in the morning and there was a good breeze. You know how it is mornings. But by the time we got to Bagley’s Green the breeze had died down. There’s a kind of a little park sort of where the railroad station is and when we got to that, there wasn’t any breeze at all.