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.
When our balloon left St. Louis, and got up in the air so far that the
earth looked like a piece of rag carpet, with pop corn scattered over
it, which were villages, and I realized that if anything busted, we
would be dropping for hours before we struck a church steeple, and would
be so dead when we hit the ground, and stiff and cold that we would be
driven down in the mud so far no one would ever find us, and I looked at
the two fool men in the basket with me, who didn’t seem to care what
became of them, as though they were unhappily married or had money in a
shaky bank, I began to choke up, and the tears came to my eyes, and I
took a long breath of thin air, and fainted dead away.
When I fainted we were being driven south, and when I came to, with a
smell of ammonia on my hair, we were going east, and the balloon had
gone down within a mile of the earth, and the men gave me some hot tea
out of a patent bottle, and pretty soon I began to enjoy myself and
wonder if I could hit a mess of negroes picking cotton in a field, with
a sand bag.
When you are up in the air so far that a policeman cannot reach you, you
feel loose enough to insult men that would knock your block off if you
should give them any lip when you were on the ground.
We came down a half a mile more, and I asked the boss man if I might
throw a sand bag at the negroes, and he said I might throw a bundle of
advertisements for liver pills at them, so I yelled, “Hello, you black
rabbits,” and when the negroes looked up and saw the balloon, they
turned pale, and dropped on their knees, and I guess they began to pray,
and I didn’t mean to interfere with their devotions, so I threw a bottle
of ginger ale at a mule hitched to a wagon near them, and when the
bottle struck the mule on the head and exploded and the ginger ale began
to squirt all over the colored population, the mule run one way with the
wagon, and the negroes ran for the cane brakes. The boss man in the
balloon complimented me on being a good shot, and said I had many
characteristics of a true balloonist, and probably before we got to the
end of the trip I would get so I could hit a church steeple with a bag
of ballast, and break up a Sunday School in the basement. He said that
being up in the rarefied air made a man feel as though he would like to
commit murder, and I found out that was so, for the next town we passed
over, when all the people were out in the main street, and the balloon
man told me to throw over a bag of sand, so we could go up higher,
instead of trying to throw the bag into a field, where there was nobody
to be hurt or frightened, do you know, I shied that bag at a fountain in
the public square and laughed like a crazy person when the water
splashed all over the crowd, and the fountain was smashed to pieces, and
the pirates in the balloon complimented me, and yet, when those men are
at home, on the ground, they are christian gentlemen, they told me, so I
made up my mind that if ballooning became a fashionable pastime, those
who participated in it would become murderers, and the people on the
ground would shoot at a balloonist on sight.
We went up so high that we were out of range of people on the ground, so
you couldn’t pick out any particular person to hit with a bundle of
pickle advertisements, so you had to shoot into a flock, and run chances
of winging somebody, so I did not enjoy it, but along towards evening we
passed over a town in Tennessee or Kentucky, where there was a race
track, and races going on, and just as we got over it I said to the boss
balloon man, “Just watch me break up that show,” and I pitched overboard
a whole mass of advertisements of different things we carried, and two
bundles hit the grand stand, and exploded, and about a million circulars
advertising pills and breakfast food struck the track, just as the
horses were in the home stretch, and of all the stampedes you ever saw
that was the worst, horses running away, riders fell off, carriages
tipped over, and the people in the grand stand falling over themselves,
and as we sailed along none of us seemed to care two whoops whether
anybody was killed or not. It was the craziness of being up in the air,
and not caring for responsibility, like a drunken chauffeur running a
crazy automobile through a crowd of children, and acting mad because
they were in the way of progress.
We laughed and chuckled at the sensation we had caused, but cared no
more for the results than a hired girl who starts a fire with kerosene.
It came on dark after a while, and all we had to do was to look at the
stars and the moon, and it seemed to me that the stars were as big as
locomotive headlights, and that you could see into them, and on several
of the largest stars I was sure I could see people moving, and the moon
seemed so near that you could catch the smile of the man in the moon,
and see him wink at you.
The two men had to remain awake all night, but after awhile I said I
guessed I would have my berth made up, and the boss man handed me a
shredded wheat biscuit for a pillow, and laid me down by the sand bags
and the canned food, and threw a blanket over me, and I slept all night,
sailing over states, the balloon moving so still there was no sound at
all.
I woke up once or twice and listened for a street car, or some noise to
put me to sleep again, and found myself wishing there was a fire, so a
fire department would go clanging by, making a noise that would be
welcome in the terrible stillness.
I dreamed the awfulest dreams, and thought I saw Pa, in another balloon,
with a rawhide in his hand, chasing me, and the great bear in the
heavens seemed to be getting up on his hind legs, with his mouth open,
ready to hug me to his hairy chest.
It was a terrible night, and at daylight the boss man woke me up and I
looked over the side of the basket and we were going across a piece of
water where there were battle ships lined up like they were at San
Diego, when Cevera’s fleet was smashed, and the men said now was the
time to demonstrate whether balloons would be serviceable in case of
war, and told me to take a bundle of malted milk advertisements, and
imagine it was a dynamite bomb, and see if I could land it on the deck
of a big white battleship. I took a good aim and let the bundle go and
it struck on deck just in front of a cross looking man in a white
uniform, and scattered all over the deck and the sailors and marines
came up on deck in a wild stampede, and threw the malted milk
advertisements overboard, and as we sailed on there was an explosion of
red hot language from the cross looking man in the white uniform, and
the boss balloon man said, “That is a good shot, Bub, for you landed
that bundle of alleged dynamite square on the deck of Admiral Bob Evans’
flagship. Didn’t you hear him swear?” and then we went on, and the man
in the white uniform was shaking his fists and his mouth was working
overtime, but we couldn’t hear the brand of profanity he was emitting,
but we knew he was going some, for before we got out of hearing the
bugles were sounding on more than a dozen battleships, the men came up
from below and took positions in the rigging and everywhere, and all was
live with action, and the boss balloon man said the fleet was preparing
for its trip around the horn, to San Francisco, and then I told the
balloon man that he couldn’t land me a minute too quick, because I was
going to join that fleet and go with Bob Evans, if I never did another
thing in my life.
[Illustration: Hit the Chief of Police with a Bottle.]
The inspiration came to me up there in the rarefied air, and I was as
sure I was going around the Horn as though I was already on one of the
ships.
We sailed along part of the day and the gas began to give out, and I had
to throw over ballast, and open cans of food, and bottles of stuff to
drink, and I made some good shots with the sand bags and the bottles.
Once I hit right in front of a brakeman on a freight train with a bottle
of soda water, and again I hit an oyster schooner with a sand bag and
must have chuckled at least a barrel of oysters. The gas kept escaping,
and presently we came down in a field in Delaware, after I had hit a
chief of police in Wilmington with a bottle of beer, which is a crime in
a prohibition country, and after we landed the police arrested the two
balloon men, and tied up the balloon. They paid me thirty dollars for my
services, and I took a train for Fortress Monroe to join the fleet, and
left the two balloon men on the way to a whipping post.
------------------------------------------------------------------------