CHAPTER XXX WE FIGURE IT OUT

 I said, “Let’s sit down and think it over and figure it out by geometry; let’s not get excited. Three things were in a bee-line, the cooking shack¹ and the house and we ourselves. Deny it if you can. The smoke died and we hiked straight for the house. Didn’t we? Now here we are almost at the house and the smoke is there again, and it’s the same chimney and it’s way out north of us and we’ve been hiking southwest. What’s the answer?”

“It’s all because Hervey Willetts is leading us,” Pee-wee shouted. “If that fellow started to go across the street he’d end at—at—at South Africa—he would.”

“Are we going to get lost again?” little Willie Cook piped up.

“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 hustle² 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 axis³ 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?”

“Suppose we start east again?” I said. “Maybe that’ll take us there because Temple Camp is north. We’ll make a flank move.”

Pee-wee said, very dark and determined⁴ like, “I’m going to follow that chimney. The rest of you can go where you want to.”

“First let’s go to the house and get a drink of water,” Warde said.

So then we went on till we came to the road, and g-o-o-d night, there we stood on the edge of the embankment, staring.

“Well—what—do—you—know—about—that?” one of the fellows just blurted⁵ out.

“I knew it all the time,” I said; “that house is not to be trusted. I’ll never trust another house as long as I live, I don’t care if it’s a Sunday School even. I wouldn’t trust a public school.”

The rest of them were laughing so hard they just couldn’t speak. There in the road just below us was a great big wagon⁶ with a kind of a trestle on it. And on that wagon was a little house. There were four horses hitched⁷ to the wagon and a funny looking man was driving them. He wasn’t driving them exactly because they were standing⁸ still. One of the wheels of the wagon was ditched alongside the road. That house had been pulled quite a long way south along the road while we were asleep. Take my advice and never use a house for a beacon⁹.

I called, “Hey, mister, where are you going with the house?”

We all sat on the high bank and looked at it. The horses were straining and trying to pull the wagon out. The house was so wide it filled up the whole road.

“It’s a portable garage,” Warde said.

I said, “Hey, mister, is that a portable garage?” The man called back, “No, can’t you see it’s a load of hay?”

“No sooner said than stung,” I said.

“Maybe you don’t know we’ve been following that house,” I said.

The man said, “Well, if you follow it you’re not likely to get far.”

Hervey said, “Oh we don’t care, we’d just as soon be here as anywhere. It’s all the same to us.”

“We’re glad you didn’t get any farther with it,” Warde said. “We’ve been trying to go west by following the roof of that thing while it was going south.”

The man said, “I’m sorry if I led you astray. I seem to have reached the end of my journey.”

“You’re lucky,” I said. “We’ve been going around and around like the mainspring of a watch all day.”

The man said, kind of laughing, “You seem to be wound up.”

“Sure, we go for eight days,” Garry said. “What are you going to do with the garage?”

“Well, I’m going to sell it for a chicken-coop if you must know,” the man said. “Pretty soon you’ll know as much as I do, won’t you?”

“Where did you come from?” Pee-wee shouted down.

“I came from Ireland,” the man said.

“I mean to-day,” Pee-wee called back.

The man said, “Oh, to-day I came from Gooseberry Centre.”

“I don’t blame you,” Hervey said; “I was there the other day. If I were a garage I wouldn’t stay there; not if I were a portable one.”

“The land I had was sold over my head,” the man said.

“You mean under your feet,” Pee-wee shouted.

The man just looked up kind of laughing and he said, “Well, since you seem to be so smart and clever maybe you can think of a way to get me out of this hole.”

“Sure we can,” Hervey said. “Where do you want to go?”

I called, “Just say where you want to go and he’ll take you somewhere else.”

“Anyway,” Pee-wee shouted, “do you claim that chickens are as important as boy scouts¹⁰?” Gee¹¹ whiz, I didn’t know what he was driving at.

1 shack   

adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚

参考例句：

• He had to sit down five times before he reached his shack.在走到他的茅棚以前，他不得不坐在地上歇了五次。
• The boys made a shack out of the old boards in the backyard.男孩们在后院用旧木板盖起一间小木屋。

2 hustle   

v.推搡；竭力兜售或获取；催促；n.奔忙(碌)

参考例句：

• It seems that he enjoys the hustle and bustle of life in the big city.看起来他似乎很喜欢大城市的热闹繁忙的生活。
• I had to hustle through the crowded street.我不得不挤过拥挤的街道。

3 axis   

n.轴，轴线，中心线；坐标轴，基准线

参考例句：

• The earth's axis is the line between the North and South Poles.地轴是南北极之间的线。
• The axis of a circle is its diameter.圆的轴线是其直径。

4 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

5 blurted   

v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She blurted it out before I could stop her. 我还没来得及制止，她已脱口而出。
• He blurted out the truth, that he committed the crime. 他不慎说出了真相，说是他犯了那个罪。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 wagon   

n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车

参考例句：

• We have to fork the hay into the wagon.我们得把干草用叉子挑进马车里去。
• The muddy road bemired the wagon.马车陷入了泥泞的道路。

7 hitched   

（免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的过去式和过去分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上

参考例句：

• They hitched a ride in a truck. 他们搭乘了一辆路过的货车。
• We hitched a ride in a truck yesterday. 我们昨天顺便搭乘了一辆卡车。

8 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

9 beacon   

n.烽火，（警告用的）闪火灯，灯塔

参考例句：

• The blink of beacon could be seen for miles.灯塔的光亮在数英里之外都能看见。
• The only light over the deep black sea was the blink shone from the beacon.黑黢黢的海面上唯一的光明就只有灯塔上闪现的亮光了。

10 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。

11 gee   

n.马；int.向右！前进！，惊讶时所发声音；v.向右转

参考例句：

• Their success last week will gee the team up.上星期的胜利将激励这支队伍继续前进。
• Gee,We're going to make a lot of money.哇！我们会赚好多钱啦！