CHAPTER XVI WE ARE SAVED

 So then we all sat on the railing of the desert island and sang Follow your leader, and Pee-wee joined in good and loud. He kept the fish under his arm. When it comes to a showdown Pee-wee is loyal. He can even be loyal to a fish.

Maybe we sat there for as much as an hour and Hervey was telling us about all the crazy things you can do on a Follow your leader hike. All of a sudden Garry shouted, “A sail! A sail! Another sail on the horizon!”

“Is it the same horizon?” I asked him.

“It’s a red sail,” he said.

“It’s a red cow, you mean,” I told him.

“We are saved!” they all started yelling again. “A cow! A cow! A red cow with white spots! She is coming to our rescue!”

“Maybe she’ll give us some malted milk,” Hervey said.

Oh boy, I had to laugh. There, away way down the road a cow was coming along, waddling¹ from one side to the other and as she came nearer we could see how she was swishing her tail.

“She’s making about ten knots an hour,” Garry said; “she’s coming straight for us. She is bringing milk to the starving castaways. Watch and see if she turns into that side road.”

“She has passed it!” Bert yelled. “She is coming straight for us under full sail. Hold the fish up as a signal of distress². She is a hero, I mean a shero.”

It looked awful funny to see that old cow lumbering³ along, and every time she stopped to eat a leaf or something we thought she was going to turn into a side lane.

“There’s a little girl right behind her,” Bert said. “She’s carrying a big whip; she’s driving the cow.”

That little girl was about half as big as Pee-wee. She had on a big sunbonnet and a kind of a gingham apron⁴ and she came hiking along behind the cow with that great big whip over her shoulder. She looked awful little.

“Do you think I want to be rescued by her?” the kid shouted.

“I’d let a mosquito rescue me, I’m so hungry,” I said.

Pretty soon the little girl and the cow were right at the end of the road where the end of the bridge belonged. The cow didn’t seem surprised but the little girl did. The cow just started to eat grass as if she didn’t care whether she got across or not.

“Road closed on account of a desert island,” Bert called.

“You have to take a detour⁵ around through the Panama Canal,” Garry shouted. “Don’t be frightened, we won’t hurt you.”

I said, “Hey, little girl, would you be kind enough to go to the nearest house and tell the people that some boy scouts⁶ are starving on this bridge on account of it being open?”

“Why don’t you close it,” she asked us kind of just a little bit scared and surprised.

“Because it doesn’t work,” I said. “See, we’ll show you. It’s on a strike.”

So then we all started pushing the big lever and she began to laugh.

“Do you think it’s a joke?” Pee-wee shouted at her.

“You’rrre dunces,” she said, rolling her r’s awful funny. “Do you think you can push it arraound like a trreadmill churrrn?”

“I don’t know what a treadmill⁷ churn is,” I told her, “because I’ve never been marooned⁸ on one——”

“Don’t you even know how to make butterrr?” she said.

“We know how to eat it,” I said, “and that’s enough.”

“You’rrre trying to turrrn it raound,” she called. “It daon’t go all the way raound, it goes back. Lift that plug in the floorrr and put the leverrr in therrre and then push; it’ll go back the same way. It only goes half-way and back—Mr. Smarrrty.”

“G-o-o-d night!” I said. “I thought it was a merry-go-round.”

“Did you think you werrre ter th’ caounty fairrr?” she asked us.

She just stood there staring at us as if she thought we were escaped lunatics from Luna Park.

I said, “Pardon us, but we never studied drawing so we don’t know anything about drawbridges. Do you mean this thing in the floor that looks like the head of a bolt?”

“Right therrre at yourrr feet,” she said.

On the floor about three feet from the lever was a kind of a round iron plate that looked like the top of a big bolt. It was just a kind of a plug and it lifted out. All we had to do was to haul the lever out and put it in there and push. There was a kind of reverse gear that made the bridge go back. And all the while we had been pushing and pushing and trying to make that pesky old bridge keep going around like a merry-go-round. But that wasn’t the way it worked. The end of it that belonged at the north had to go back to the north; the bridge only went half-way around.

It wasn’t hard closing it again when we got it started. It moved back very slowly until the ends of it fitted the ends of the road. The little girl just stood there kind of disgusted with us. Pee-wee didn’t say a word.

As soon as the way was open the cow started across, the little girl after her. She looked back two or three times as if she didn’t know what to make of us. Once the cow looked back, kind of puzzled like; that’s the way it seemed to me.

1 waddling   

v.（像鸭子一样）摇摇摆摆地走( waddle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Rhinoceros Give me a break, were been waddling every day. 犀牛甲：饶了我吧，我们晃了一整天了都。 来自互联网
• A short plump woman came waddling along the pavement. 有个矮胖女子一摇一摆地沿人行道走来。 来自互联网

2 distress   

n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛

参考例句：

• Nothing could alleviate his distress.什么都不能减轻他的痛苦。
• Please don't distress yourself.请你不要忧愁了。

3 lumbering   

n.采伐林木

参考例句：

• Lumbering and, later, paper-making were carried out in smaller cities. 木材业和后来的造纸都由较小的城市经营。
• Lumbering is very important in some underdeveloped countries. 在一些不发达的国家，伐木业十分重要。

4 apron   

n.围裙；工作裙

参考例句：

• We were waited on by a pretty girl in a pink apron.招待我们的是一位穿粉红色围裙的漂亮姑娘。
• She stitched a pocket on the new apron.她在新围裙上缝上一只口袋。

5 detour   

n.绕行的路，迂回路；v.迂回，绕道

参考例句：

• We made a detour to avoid the heavy traffic.我们绕道走，避开繁忙的交通。
• He did not take the direct route to his home,but made a detour around the outskirts of the city.他没有直接回家，而是绕到市郊兜了个圈子。

6 scouts   

侦察员[机，舰]( scout的名词复数 )； 童子军； 搜索； 童子军成员

参考例句：

• to join the Scouts 参加童子军
• The scouts paired off and began to patrol the area. 巡逻人员两个一组，然后开始巡逻这个地区。

7 treadmill   

n.踏车；单调的工作

参考例句：

• The treadmill has a heart rate monitor.跑步机上有个脉搏监视器。
• Drugs remove man from the treadmill of routine.药物可以使人摆脱日常单调的工作带来的疲劳。

8 marooned   

adj.被围困的；孤立无援的；无法脱身的

参考例句：

• During the storm we were marooned in a cabin miles from town. 在风暴中我们被围困在离城数英里的小屋内。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Five couples were marooned in their caravans when the River Avon broke its banks. 埃文河决堤的时候，有5对夫妇被困在了他们的房车里。 来自辞典例句