Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl by Daniel Pinkwater

Author:Daniel Pinkwater
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780547223247
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2012-02-14T19:58:52+00:00

CHAPTER 29

You Can Get Used to Anything, Almost

Harold was good at handling the boat. The big problem with a coracle is that you can't point it in a direction because it doesn't have a point. If you don't pay attention or stop working for a moment, it will just spin and bob, going nowhere. The Hudson has currents, and finally Harold found one—then all he had to do was steer, and the river carried us south at a pretty good clip. The boat didn't bounce and wobble as much.

It was a mild morning, and the view from the river was pretty. We stopped being nauseated and were almost comfortable, except when a barge or ship went past. Big oceangoing freighters and huge barges pushed by powerful tugboats go up and down the Hudson, and they look really very big when you see them from water level. When one of them passed us it was like looking up at a moving mountain. Then the ship would glide beyond us and the river would feel very smooth for a minute ... and then the water churned up by the ship's massive propellers would catch us. Wave after wave would shake us and cause the little boat to jump up and smack down again and again. It was a completely scary experience. Add to that, the ships would sound their horns when they saw us, and the noise made us temporarily deaf, so getting knocked around by the wake of the propellers would take place in silence.

"I may have miscalculated just a little," Harold said. "The trip may be longer than five or six hours."

Molly and I looked at each other.

"What happened to 'Harold have boat. Boat good. Harold good giant' and all that stuff?" Molly asked.

"Oh. Sorry. Harold make mistake. Trip take longer," Harold said.

"Forget the pidgin English," Molly said. "We know you can talk regular. Why the act?"

"Harold have inferiority complex," Harold began. "I mean, I ... I do it beause I'm short for a giant. Talking like that sort of jacks me up a little. It sounds more gianty."

"So you're educated?"

"I have a degree from Vassar College."

"I thought it was a girls' school."

"They take a few males. They need them in the Dance Department, and in my case the Anthropology Department wanted to study me."

"Is that what you studied, anthropology?"

"I majored in classical accountancy," Harold said.

"And Professor Tag was your teacher," I said. "That makes sense."

"My senior project was about double-entry bookkeeping in the age of Pericles," Harold said.

"What were you saying about miscalculating, speaking of people who are good with numbers?" Molly asked.

"Oh, yes, that," Harold said. "Remember when I said it would take five or six hours to get to the island?"

"Yes."

"Well, if that had been correct, we'd have arrived around noon. But I got mixed up. Comes of trying to figure in my head using roman numerals."

"And now that you've thought it over?"

"We'll get there more like midnight," Harold said.

"Oh, goodie! More time in this stinking coracle!"

"Well,

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