PECK’S BAD BOY IN AN AIRSHIP
[Illustration: “Take That from Your Little Hennery.”]
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Peck’s Bad Boy
in an Airship
By Hon. Geo. W. Peck
Author of Peck’s Bad Boy, Peck’s Bad Boy Abroad, Peck’s Bad Boy
With the Circus, Peck’s Bad Boy With the Cowboys, Etc.
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Humorous and Interesting
A story relating the adventures of Peck’s Bad Boy and His
Pa who are sent to Europe to investigate airships with an
idea of using them in the United States Navy. Tells of their
adventures in Europe also in South Africa where the airship
is used in hunting wild animals.
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Illustrated by Charles Lederer
The Celebrated Illustrator and Cartoonist
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CHICAGO
STANTON and VAN VLIET CO.
PUBLISHERS
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Copyright, 1908
By W. G. CHAPMAN
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Copyright, 1908
By THOMPSON & THOMAS
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CONTENTS.
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CHAPTER I.
The Bad Boy Wants to Be an Orphan—The Bad Boy Goes to an Orphan
Asylum—The Government Gives the Bad Boy’s Pa an Appointment to
Travel Over the World and Get Information About Airships,
Dirigible Balloons and Everything to Help Our Government Know
What Other Governments are Doing in Case of War 15
CHAPTER II.
No Encouragement for Inventive Genius in Orphan Home—The Boy
Uses His New Invention, a Patent Clothes Wringer, in Milking 28
CHAPTER III.
The Boy Escapes from Orphan Asylum—The Boy and His Chum Had Red
Letter Days—The Boy is Adopted by New Friends 42
CHAPTER IV.
A Bad Railroad Wreck—The Boy Contrasts Their Ride to One in a
Parlor Car—The Lawyer is the Greatest Man on Earth—The Boy
Settles His Claim for $20 55
CHAPTER V.
The Bad Boy Leaves St. Louis in a Balloon—The Boy Makes a Trip
to San Francisco and Joins Evans’ Fleet—The Police Arrest Boy
and Tie Up Balloon 67
CHAPTER VI.
The Balloon Lands in Delaware—The Boy Visits the
Battleships—They Scour the Boy With a Piece of Brick and Some
Laundry Soap—The Boy Investigates the Mechanism of the
Battleships—The Boy Goes With the Ships as a Mascot 78
CHAPTER VII.
A Storm Comes from the Coast of Cuba—Everyone Goes to Sleep on
the Ship Except the Watchman and Pilot—The Bad Boy is Put in
the Dungeon—The Captain Says to Throw the Boy Overboard to
Feed the Sharks 91
CHAPTER VIII.
The Boy Dresses Up in His Sunday Clothes and Tells the Captain
He is Ready to Die—The Crew Throw a Steer Overboard to Feed a
School of Sharks—The Boy Produces His New Electric Battery—The
Bad Boy Makes a Trip to France to Meet His Pa 104
CHAPTER IX.
The Bad Boy Arrives in France—The Boy’s Pa is Suspected of Being
an Anarchist—The Boy Finds Pa Seated at a Large Table Bragging
About America—He Told Them the Men in America Were All
Millionaires and Unmarried 131
CHAPTER X.
Pa Had the Hardest Time of His Life in Paris—Pa Drinks Some Goat
Milk Which Gives Him Ptomaine Poison in His Inside Works—Pa
Attends the Airship Club in the Country—Pa Draws on American
Government for $10,000 145
CHAPTER XI.
The Boy and His Pa Leave France and Go to Germany, Where They
Buy an Airship—They Get the Airship Safely Landed—Pa and the
Boy With the Airship Start for South Africa—Pa Shows the Men
What Power He Has Over the Animal Kingdom 157
CHAPTER XII.
All Kinds of Climates in South Africa—Pa Hires Men to Capture
Wild Animals—The Boy and His Pa Capture Some Tigers and a Big
Lion—They Have a Narrow Escape from a Rhinoceros 170
CHAPTER XIII.
Pa Was a Hero After Capturing Two Tigers and a Lion—Pa Had an
Old Negro With Sixty Wives Working for Him—Pa Makes His Escape
in Safety—Pa Goes to Catch Hippopotamusses 181
CHAPTER XIV.
Pa Was Blackmailed and Scared Out of Lots of Money—Pa Teaching
the Natives to Speak English—Pa Said the Natives Acted Like
Human Beings—Pa Buys Some Animals in the Jungle 194
CHAPTER XV.
The Idea of Airships is All Right in Theory, but They are Never
Going to Be a Reliable Success—Pa Drowns the Lions Out With
Gas—The Bad Boy and His Pa Capture a Couple of Lions—Pa Moves
Camp to Hunt Gorillas 207
CHAPTER XVI.
The Boy’s Pa Shows Bravery in the Jungles in Africa—Four
Gorillas Chase Pa—The Boy and His Pa Don’t Sleep Much at
Night—The Boy Discovers a Marsh Full of Wild Buffaloes 220
CHAPTER XVII.
The Boy’s Experience With an African Buffalo—The Boy’s Pa Shoots
Roman Candles to Scare the Buffaloes—The Boy’s Pa Tames the
Wild Animals 234
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Boy and His Pa Start for the Coast in an Airship—Pa Saluted
the Crowd as We Passed Over Them—The Airship Lands Amid a
Savage Tribe—The King of the Tribe Escorts Pa and the Boy to
the Palace 246
CHAPTER XIX.
The Boy’s Pa Becomes King over the Negroes—Pa Shows the Natives
How to Dig Wells—Pa Teaches the Natives to become Soldiers—The
Boy Uses a Dozen Nigger Chasers and Some Roman Candles—The
Boy, His Pa and the Natives Assist at the 4th of July
Celebration 258
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ILLUSTRATIONS.
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Gee, My Ideas of an Orphan Home Got a Shock.
The Way Freshmen Do in College When They’re Being Murdered.
Gosh, But I Never Had Such an Excursion.
Grabbed the Balloon Rope and Gave it a Hitch Around the Pole.
Any Man That Lays Hands on the Government Mail Can Be
Imprisoned for Life for Treason.
Hit the Chief of Police With a Bottle.
They Pulled Me Through the Forty-Foot Gun to Swab it Out.
When it Exploded the Jap Was the Scaredest Person I Ever Saw.
The Boss of the Boat Ordered Me Pulled Out With a Boat Hook.
I Am Thy Father’s Ghost—Come on in, the Water’s Fine.
The Captain Got Upon a Chair and Pulled a Revolver and Was
Going to Shoot.
I Gave Him a Squeeze That Sent a Shock Through Him That
Loosened His Teeth.
Pa’s Face Was Scratched So They Sent Him to the Pest House.
After Pa Had Been Ducked in the Fountain They Charged for Two
Ducks He Killed by Falling on Them.
The Fireworks Went Off. The Woman Threw a Fit and Pa Raised
Out of the Smoke.
Up She Went With the Inventor Steering and Pa Hanging on for
Dear Life.
Pa Gave a Honk Honk Like an Auto, But the Lion Wasn’t
Frightened So You Would Notice.
When Pa Found the Snake Coiled Up on His Blanket He Threw a
Fit.
Looking Him Square in the Face I began to Chant,
Ene-Mene-Miny-Mo.
Pa Astride of a Zebra, Has Frightened the Elephants Into a
Stampede by Playing “A Hot Time” on a Mouth Organ.
Pa Made a Lunge and Fell on Top of the Little Elephant, Which
Began to Make a Noise Like a Baby.
“There’s Your Lions, About a Dozen, Captured Down in That
Hole; Help Yourselves,” Said Pa.
“Get in There, You Measly Cur Dog,” Said Pa, Kicking the Big
Lion at Every Jump.
Pa Stopped the Music and Repeated an Old Democratic Speech of
His, and They Acted Just Like a Caucus.
All He Had to Do Was Play “Supper is Now Ready in the Dining
Car.”
Some of Those Negroes are Running Yet, and Will, No Doubt,
Come Out at Cairo, Egypt.
Pa Had to Put His Foot on Their Necks and Acknowledge Him
Their King and Protector.
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Peck’s Bad Boy in an Airship.
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CHAPTER I.
The Bad Boy Wants to Be an Orphan—The Bad Boy Goes to an Orphan
Asylum—The Government Gives the Bad Boy’s Pa an Appointment to
Travel Over the World and Get Information About Airships,
Dirigible Balloons and Everything to Help Our Government Know
What Other Governments Are Doing in Case of War.
I have always wanted to be an orphan and I guess now I have got my wish.
I have watched orphans a whole lot and they have seemed to me to have
the easiest job outside of politics.
To see a good mess of orphans at an Orphan Asylum, with no parents to
butt in and interfere with your enjoyment has seemed to me to be an
ideal existence.
When a boy has a father that he has to watch constantly to keep him from
going wrong he has no time to have any fun, but to belong to a syndicate
of orphans, with an easy old maid matron to look after the whole bunch,
an individual orphan who has ginger in him can have the time of his
young life. At least that is the way it has always seemed to me.
They set on the food at an orphanage, and if you have a pretty good
reach, you can get enough corralled around your plate to keep the wolf
from the door, and when it comes to clothes, you don’t have to go to a
tailor, or a hand me down store, and take something you don’t want
because it is cheap, but you take any clothes that are sent in by
charitable people, which have been worn enough so there is no style
about them, and no newness to wear off by rolling in the grass, and you
put them on and let it go at that, if they do smell of moth balls.
Pa has skipped and I am left alone and I shall enter as a freshman in an
Orphan Asylum, and later go out into the world and travel on my shape.
Pa took me to Washington and for a week he was visiting the different
Departments, and nights he would talk in his sleep about air ships and
balloons, and forts and battleships, and about going abroad, until I
thought he was getting nutty.
One day he called me up to our room in the hotel and after locking the
door, and plugging up the keyhole with chewed paper he said: “Now,
Hennery, I want you to listen right out loud. The government has given
me an appointment to travel over the world and get information about air
ships, divagable balloons, and everything that will help our government
to know what other governments are doing in inventing things to be used
in case of war. I am to be the Billy Pinkerton of the War Department and
shall have to spy in other governments, and I am to be the traveling
diplomat of the government, and jolly all nations, and find out how
things are running everywhere.
“You will have to stay home this time because you would be a dead give
away, so I will send you to a nice orphan home where you will be taught
to work, and where guards will keep you on the inside of the fence, and
put you to bed in a straight jacket if you play any of your jokes, see?”
and Pa gave me a ticket to an orphans’ home, and a letter of
introduction to the matron and the next day I was an inmate, with all
the degrees coming to me. What do you think of that, and Pa on the
ocean, with a government commission in his pocket?
Gee, but my ideas of an orphans’ home got a shock when I arrived at the
station where the orphans’ home was located. I thought there would be a
carriage at the train to meet me, and a nice lady dressed in white with
a cap on her head, to take me in her arms and hug me, and say, “Poor
little boy, I will be a sister to you,” but there was no reception
committee, and I had to walk a mile with my telescope valise, and when I
found the place and went in the door, to present my letter to the
matron, a man with a scar on his face, and one eye gone, met me and
looked over my papers, and went, one eye on me, and called an assistant
private and told him to take me and give me the first or entered
apprentice degree.
[Illustration: Gee, My Ideas of an Orphan Home Got a Shock.]
The private took me by the wrist and gave me a jerk and landed me in the
laundry, and told me to strip off, and when I had removed my clothes and
folded them and laid them on a table, he took the clothes away from me,
and then told me to climb into a laundry tub, and he turned cold water
on me and gave me a bar of yellow laundry soap, and after I had lathered
myself he took a scrubbing brush, such as floors are scrubbed with, and
proceeded in one full swoop to peel the hide off of me with a rough
crash towel till you could see my veins and arteries, and inside works
as well as though you had used X-rays, and when I was ready to die and
wanted to, I yelled murder, and he put his hand over my mouth so hard
that he loosened my front teeth, and I guess I died right there or
fainted, for when I came to, and thought the resurrection morning, that
they used to tell me about in the Sunday School, had come. I found
myself dressed in a sort of combination shirt and drawers, like a bunny
nightie, made of old saddle blankets, and he told me that was the
uniform of the orphanage and that I could go out and play for fifteen
minutes, after which the bell would ring and I could go from play to
work. Gosh, but I was glad to get out doors, but when I began to breathe
the fresh air, and scratch myself where the saddle blanket clothes
pricked me, about fifty boys, who were evidently sophomores in the
orphanage, came along, and made a rush for me, to haze me as a freshman.
Well, they didn’t do a thing to me. They tied a rope around one ankle,
and threw the rope over a limb, and pulled me off the ground, and danced
a war dance around me and run thistles up my trouser’s legs, and spanked
me with a board with slivers in it, and let me down and walked over me
in a procession, singing “There’ll be a hot time in the old town
to-night.” I laughed all the time, because that is the way freshmen do
in college when they are being murdered, and I thought my new associates
would like me better if I died game. Just before I died game the bell
rang, and the one eyed pirate and his chief of staff came out and said
we would go to work, and the boys were divided into squads and put to
work, some husking corn, others sweeping up dead leaves, others milking
cows, and doing everything necessary around a farm.
Before I was set to work I had a few minutes of silent reflection, and I
thought of my changed condition from my porcelain lined bath tub with
warm water and soft towels, to that bath in the laundry, and the
skinning process of preparing a boy for a better life.
[Illustration: The Way Freshmen Do in College When They’re Being
Murdered.]
Then what do you suppose they set me to work at? Skinning bull heads and
taking out the insides. It seems the boys catch bull heads in a pond,
and the bull heads are used for human food, and the freshest boys were
to dress them. Well, I wasn’t going to kick on anything they gave me for
a stunt, so I put on an apron, and for four hours I skinned and cut open
bull heads in a crude sort of way, until I was so sick I couldn’t
protect myself from the assaults of the live bull heads, and the cook
said I done the job so well that she would ask to have me skin all the
bull heads after that. I said I would rather milk cows so the pirate
gave me a milk pail and told me to go and milk the freckled cow, and I
went up to the cow as I had seen farmers do, and sat down on a wooden
camp stool and put the pail under the cow, and began to squeeze the
Summer Sausages she wore under her stomach, four of ’em, and the more I
squeezed the more there didn’t any milk come, and the cow looked around
at me in a pitying sort of way, but the milk did not arrive on schedule
time, and then I thought of a farmer I once saw kick a cow in the slats,
and I thought maybe that was the best way to cause the milk to hurry and
flow, so I got up off the stool and hauled off my hind leg and gave that
cow a swift kick that sent her toes clear in to her liver and lights and
sausage covers.
Well I thought it was a car of dynamite running into an elevator and
exploding, but the boys that picked me up and poured milk on my face to
bring me to, said it was not an explosion, but that the cow had reared
up in front and kicked up behind, and struck me with all four feet, and
had hooked me with her horns, and switched me with her tail, and pawed
me with her forward feet, and licked my hair with her tongue, and laid
down and rolled on me. Well, I certainly looked it. Gee, but I don’t
want any more farmer’s life in mine.
I certainly thought that was the way to cause a cow to give milk. Maybe
I ought to have sworn at her the way the farmer did. I remember now,
that he used language not fit to print, but I have not taken the
swearing degree yet.
Well, they got me braced up so I could go to dinner, and it was surely a
sumptuous repast, fried bull heads and bread. I have eaten fish at home
and at hotels, where you had ketchup, and celery, and vegetables, and
gravy, and pie, and good things, but to sit down with fifty boys and eat
just bull heads, and stale bread, and try to look pleasant like you were
at a banquet, was one on your little Hennery that made him feel that the
pleasures of being an orphan had been over drawn.
Gosh, but the boys tell me we have bull heads here six times a week,
because they don’t cost anything, and that the bones stick through your
skin so they hold your clothes on.
I am organizing a union among the boys and we are going to call a
strike, and if the pirate with one eye does not grant all we ask, we are
going to walk out in a body, and jump a freight train, and go out in the
wide world to make our fortunes. I shall go look for pa. There can’t no
man give me such a dirty shake. I feel like I had been left on a door
step, with a note on the basket asking the finder to take good care of
me “’cause I was raised a pet.”
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