“Come on and help,” I said to Pee-wee. “Suppose the fish jumps off the bridge,” he said. “Do you think I’m going to take any chances?”
“The strength of an Animal Cracker doesn’t count for much,” Garry said.
“Look out the fish doesn’t jump in the creek with you,” I told Pee-wee.
Well, we pushed and pushed and pushed and braced our feet and kept pushing for dear life, but we couldn’t budge that lever. Pee-wee held the fish tight under one arm and helped us but it wasn’t any use. We just couldn’t budge the lever.
“We’re marooned for fair,” Bert said.
“Boy Scouts Starve on Merry-go-round Island,” I said. “That would be a good heading for a newspaper article.”
“Merry-go-standstill you mean,” Hervey began laughing. “What do we care? It’s all in the game. Come ahead, give her one more push; follow your leader.”
“Do you call starving a game?” the kid fairly yelled at him. I had to laugh, he looked so funny standing there with the fish under his arm.
We tried some more but—no use. “The merry-go-round has stalled,” I said. “We’ve got Robinson Crusoe tearing his hair with jealousy.”
“We’re on a desert island in earnest,” Bert said. He was the last to give up.
“Don’t talk about desert, it reminds me of dessert,” I said.
“I’m not so much in earnest either,” Hervey began laughing. “Come on, follow your leader.” Then he started to jump up on the railing.
I said, “It’s a very good joke; he, he, ho, ho, and a couple of ha ha’s! But how about lunch? We can’t start a fire on this bridge without burning it up and besides we haven’t got any kindling.”
“The only way we can get off the bridge is to burn it up,” Hervey said. “The boy scout stood on the burning bridge——”
“Eating fish by the peck,” I said. “This is a new kind of a desert island—1921 model. We made it ourselves. But what care we? We have food. We care naught, quoth I.”
“What good is the food?” Pee-wee screamed. “You broke the bridge, that’s what you did! And now we’ve got to go hungry.”
“Go?” I said. “What do you mean by ‘go’? You mean we’ve got to stay here hungry. Our skeletons will be found on Merry-go-round Island——”
“Following their leader,” Hervey said.
“Along with the skeleton of a faithful fish,” Bert said. “That’s what happens to young boys when they go around too much.”
“That’s what happens when any one goes around with this bunch,” the kid shouted. “You’re so crazy that it’s catching; even the sign posts and bridges go crazy. The next time I go on a funny-bone hike I won’t go at all, but if I do I’ll bring my lunch you can bet.”
“What’ll we do next?” Hervey wanted to know.
I said, “Let’s have a feast, let’s feast our eyes on the fish. I can just kind of hear him sizzling over the fire.”
“You can’t eat sizzles,” the kid said, very disgusted like.
I said, “No, but you can think of them. Let’s all think how fine the fish would taste if we could only cook him. Do you remember how we moved a lunch wagon by the power of our appetites? Maybe we can move the bridge that way.”
“You make me tired,” Pee-wee yelled. “If you hadn’t started ............