"If you"re looking for--for--a piece of pie," Pee-wee piped up, "will everything be pie?"
"Posilutely," I said. "Just the same as when you"re in Hamburg everything looks like ham. It"s the same only different. Just the same as all the buildings in Paris are made of plaster of paris. Just the same as the raving Ravens are afraid of wooden dummies. What"s the answer?"
"Answer to what?" he shouted.
"Anything," I said. "It depends on what the question is. Warde Hollister is a better scout than any of us. Deny it if you dare, quoth I. He has performed the most heroic act since Artie Van Arlen, patrol leader of the Ravens, killed a couple of hours waiting for a train for Temple Camp. They don"t care what they kill, those scouts."
We put the baseball target back where he belonged and I guess he"s dead yet for all I know. He faced a good many bee-lines, that"s one sure thing. Anyway, we should bother about him because we had our own bee-line hike to finish, only the worst was yet to come.
CHAPTER XVIII
ONE, TWO, THREE, GO!
After that, for as much as about ten yards, we didn"t have any more adventures. Then we had to climb over the band-stand, but that wasn"t much of an adventure.
The next thing we pa.s.sed was a lot of cookies I had in my pocket. I pa.s.sed them around. After that we came to the place where Daredevil Dennell used to go up in a balloon and just beyond there is the ferris-wheel.
Now it was about half past three or so, or maybe four o"clock, when we came near the ferris-wheel. The sun was over on the ridge, anyway, and it was all kind of glinted up with yellow up there, and it was getting more that way all the time. I was glad we were going up there, you can bet.
"What do you say we take a rest in the ferris-wheel?" Westy said. "It"s just about in our path."
"Suits me," I said.
Now I"ll tell you the way that wheel was. There were six cars and one of them was exactly at the top and one of them was exactly at the bottom.
The trestle that the wheel hung on was only half as high as the wheel.
Up near the top of the trestle was the axle. So as we came along in the same direction that the wheel was standing, the next car to the one on the bottom was right in front of us and hanging just about low enough so we could reach it. Those cars were not so big and they were boarded up just like everything else was in that old park.
Maybe you"ll say that the easiest thing would have been for us to climb into the lowest car which was hanging right plunk underneath. But that one seemed to be all boarded up tight. Besides, my patrol is crazy, just as I told you. The next car on the side of the wheel nearer to us was partly open on account of the boards being broken away. So what did Westy do but take a running jump with the rest of us all after him. As soon as three or four of us grabbed hold of the car, the old wheel began creaking and the car started moving down. Then all of us went sprawling out all over the ground.
"Try it again!" the kid shouted. "One--two----"
"Wait till it stops," they all shouted.
I can"t tell you how far around that wheel went before it stopped. All I know is it kept creaking and creaking and then it stopped and there was a car right in front of us about ten feet from the ground. That one was most all open so it would be easy to tumble into it.
"One--two--three--_go_!" somebody said, and off we went for a good running jump.
I don"t know who the first one was to catch hold of the car. But anyway, we all went tumbling over each other into it and down it went, creaking, creaking, creaking, till it hung from the lowest part of the wheel.
"All the comforts of home," Westy said. "I like this better than our private railroad car."
"Sure," I said, "it"s just the place for Pee-wee; he"s always going up in the air. Notice how it rocks? Oh, boy, I hope we don"t get seasick."
In that car were two seats facing each other. Those cars were not made for as many as nine people, but we managed to crowd in all right. The floor of our car was about two or three feet from the ground and it swung like a swing. It was nice in there. Looking up through all the wire-work we could see the car at the top swinging.
"I"d like to be in that one," one of the fellows said.
"If you were in that one it would be _this_ one," I told him.
"What are you talking about?" Pee-wee said.
"I"m talking about whether anything can be something else," I told him.
He said, "I suppose that"s what you call mental digestion."
"It"s logic," I told him. "If we were in that car, the nine of us, it would come down here, wouldn"t it? Don"t you know what the attraction of gravity is?"
"It never attracted me," he said.
"The heaviest part of a thing goes down," I said. "If you were up there you"d only come down here. The top car is the bottom one. Everything is something different. _Up_ means where you"re not. See? What do we care?"
We all sat there with our heads thrown back looking at the car away up above us.
"See how it rocks?" Dorry said. "I bet it"s good and breezy up there."
"Why don"t the others rock?" Hunt asked.
"Search me," I said.
"There"s nothing on either side of that one at the top," Westy said.
"There isn"t even much of the wheel up there to break the force of the wind."
"Correct," I said. "Take two credits--and one cookie. Here."
"There isn"t any such thing as the top of a wheel," Dorry said.
"Sure there is," I told him; "the part that"s at the top is the top."
"The part that"s at the top of what?" he came back at me.
"I should worry," I said. "Don"t you think I"ve got wheels enough in my head without bothering about a ferris-wheel?"
So then we all started singing that crazy song that we used to sing when we were being hauled all over the country in our camp on wheels:
"There was a Duke of Yorkshire, He had ten thousand men; He marched them up the hill, And then he marched them down again.
And when they"re up, they"re up, And when they"re down, they"re down; And when they"re only half way up, They"re neither up nor down."
CHAPTER XIX
UP IN THE AIR