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.
When our balloon that sailed from St. Louis came down in Delaware, and I
had bid good bye to the two men whom I sailed with, and they had paid me
good money for my services and keeping them awake, I thought of that
fleet we had passed over at Fortress Monroe, the beautiful white battle
ships, and I was afraid I could not get there before it sailed, and
secure my berth, as I had made up my mind to go with it around the horn,
and help fight Japan or mosquitoes, or any old thing that came in the
way, so I took the first train to Fortress Monroe, and found that the
whole population of several near by states were going too, as the
President was going to review the fleet before it sailed.
The next day I was at the hotel at Old Point and with hundreds of other
people took a launch and went out among the battle ships. Everybody was
welcome to go aboard the ships, and we visited several of them and were
shown all over the vessels by the uniformed jacks.
Gee, but a battleship is like a sky scraper on land, and you can go from
the roof clear down half a mile below the water line, and it is like a
combination of an engine manufactory, a boiler plant, a coal yard, a
wholesale grocery, a packing house, a blacksmith shop, a department
store, a hotel, a powder mill, a suburban trolley line, and a bargain
sale of blankets, a state fair and a military encampment, and a parade
ground, a county jail and an apartment house, with rooms to let on the
European plan and all of it in an iron coffin, liable to go to the
bottom any minute, if the air tanks are punctured.
Gee, but I was almost afraid to be down cellar in a battleship without
any life preserver, and when I went up on deck, where I could jump
overboard if she began to sink, there, away on top of the whole old cook
stove, were guns so big that it seemed if one got to moving around on
deck it would tip the ship over. It seemed to me like boring a hole in a
flat iron and crawling in, and being put in a bath tub, or like rigging
up a coal stove with paddles and outriggers, and paddling out in a marsh
duck shooting.
The first hour I was investigating the mechanism of a battleship and was
scared silly for fear she would get ready to sink, and as I looked at
the iron everywhere, which I had been taught in school would sink so
quick it would make your head swim, I wondered what my nation could be
thinking of to build ships of iron and depend on wind to keep them on
top of the water, and I thought it would be just as safe to cover an
iron railroad bridge with building paper, and launch it for a trip
across the ocean; and yet all the officers and men seemed to enjoy it,
and forget about the danger, for they laughed and played jokes, and put
on airs, and mashed the girls who came on board as though they had made
up their minds that it was only a matter of time when the ships would
sink, and they seemed to congratulate themselves that when they went
down with the ships a time lock would close them up hermetically so
sharks and devil fish couldn’t eat the crew, and they could float around
for all time and eternity safe from the resurrection as they would be
buried in a safety deposit box in the vault of a trust company.
Some of the jacks played it on me. They took me and wrapped an angora
goat skin around me, with the hair outside, and tied a string to my
feet, and run it out of the breach of the big sixteen inch gun, and
another string on my legs, and they pulled me back and forth through
that forty foot gun to swab it out, and when I came out alive they
laughed and were going to tie a bag of shot to my feet and let me off a
plank over the side to practice on a burial at sea, but I yelled for
help and a cross looking man came along and pardoned me, and told the
fellows to take me to his cabin and wash the powder off my face, and
hold me until he could have a talk with me. When they had scoured me
with a piece of brick and some yellow laundry soap, the man came into
the cabin, and the boys who had hazed me said he was Admiral Evans, and
I remembered him cause once when he was in the light house service he
entertained Pa and me on his light house tender, and held me on his lap
at the New Orleans Mardi Gras, and I said, “Hello, Mr. Evans, don’t you
remember little Hennery? I am Peck’s Bad Boy,” and he remembered me, and
said, “What n’ell you doing here?” and I told him I knew what he was up
against, going around the horn, and to San Francisco and Japan and the
Philippines, and that I wanted to go along on his ship as a mascot, or a
waiter or anything, and he said he didn’t know, but I would be a good
mascot, as last trip they had a goat and a monkey for mascots, and I had
a combination of both, and if he was going to make a trip to hades, or
any climate hotter than the straits of Magellan, he thought I would be
all right.
[Illustration: They Pulled Me Through That Forty-Foot Gun to Swab It
Out.]
He asked me what I could do and I told him there was nothing that I
couldn’t do if properly encouraged, anything, from flying a flag of
truce from the fighting top, to riding up in the ammunition elevator
with five hundred pounds of dynamite, to acting as the propeller to a
Whitehead torpedo.
We talked it over for an hour and he asked about Pa, and then he said he
would think it over, and he gave me a ticket with a number on, and told
me to be on the front porch of the Hotel Chamberlaine at nine o’clock
the second morning after, and if a steam launch from the Connecticut
landed there and gave two whistles, for me to get on board with my
baggage, and report to him before the fleet sailed.
Well, say, this was quick work, and I called a launch and visited the
other vessels, promising to be Johnny on the spot at the appointed hour.
It was a great sight to see the review, when the President came along on
the yacht Mayflower and I forgot all about the battleships being of iron
liable to sink if the wind got out of the tanks, and was never so proud
in my life as I was when I saw the jacks climb up on the rigging and
hang on like monkeys, lined up like they were drilling on deck, and when
the Connecticut began to fire a salute to the President, out of those
great iron sewer pipes, and all the rest of the fleet began to shoot at
the air, the noise was so loud that it made your head feel like you do
when you take seidletz powders, and it gullups up your nose, and the
smokeless powder made the smoke so thick you couldn’t see anything but
the President’s teeth, as he sailed along on his yacht, and I got so
patriotic that the chills went up my back like when you have the grip
coming on, and then the smoke cleared away and when a million American
flags were flung to the breeze, I began to choke up like you do when you
are sick and the callers say, “Well, brace up boy, you may pull through,
but there are a hundred chances against your living till morning,” and
the tears rolled down my cheeks, and my throat got full like I had the
tonsilitis, and everybody else on our launch except two Japanese were
crying, and then the President’s yacht took a position, and all the
battleships swinging into line and marched past, and the bands played,
and we all just bellered for patriotic joy, and I was so mad to see
those Japanese standing there like bottles of castor oil, not even
smiling, that I blew up a toy balloon which I have been playing air ship
with, and I whacked it on the head of the meanest looking Jap, and when
it exploded he was the scardest-looking person I ever saw, because he
thought one of those sixteen-inch shells had gone off in his hat, and
everybody said, “served him right,” and then he laughed, the first time
since the review started, and he wanted the skim of my toy balloon as a
souvenir of the first gun fired in the war with Japan.
[Illustration: When it Exploded the Jap Was the Scaredest Person I Ever
Saw.]
From that day, when I had examined critically our fleet and seen it
salute, and monkey around the President, I felt so patriotic that I
wanted to fight for my country, and I could hardly wait two days for Mr.
Evans to send his launch ashore after me, and I didn’t care if the whole
thing was iron, that couldn’t float under natural conditions and if Bob
Evans should put oarlocks on a bar of railroad iron, and put me on it,
with orders to go sink a Japanese sampon, or whatever they call their
war ships, I would step aboard that bar of railroad iron with a light
heart, wave my hat and tell them all to go plumb.
So we went ashore, and that evening there was a ball at the hotel, and
all the officers of the navy were there, and the army, and millions of
ladies with clothes on the lower half of them, and talcum powder and
black court plaster on the upper half, and the way they danced and
waltzed and flirted and et lobsters would make you dizzy, and when Bob
Evans walked limping by me, with a two-hundred-pound lady on one arm,
and a ninety-pound girl on the rheumatiz side of him, I was so full of
patriotic fire I couldn’t help saying, “Hello, Bob, I will be on deck
all right,” and he looked at me with an expression on his face that
looked as though he had drawn a lobster that had been dead too long, and
he marched along with his female procession, and the orchestra struck up
a good-night waltz, and everybody waltzed, and took some drinks, and
went home to wait the sailing of the fleet the next day, and I went to
bed with an order to be called at sunrise, so I could be on the porch
with my ticket in my hand, ready to jump into the launch when she
whistled and sail away “for a frolic or a fight,” and I didn’t care
which.
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