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.
I never slept a wink that night after the phosphorus episode, which I
painted the wild steer so it looked like a four-legged ghost, and scared
the crew so they nearly deserted the ship, because the captain ordered,
as I supposed, that I be cast overboard the next morning, to give the
sharks a meat sandwich, and all night I tried to prepare myself for
death, though I could not help thinking that in some way I would escape.
The next morning I got up and collected all the shoes of the officers
and got a blacking brush and began blacking them. Soon there was
trouble, because every man missed his shoes, and they began to hunt for
them, and they found me working at the shoes and singing, “Pull for the
shore, brother,” and such pious hymns.
I was dressed up in my Sunday clothes, and when the captain got his
shoes he wanted to know what was the meaning of my sudden industry, and
the funeral aspect all around, and I told him I had heard him tell the
crew to chuck me overboard, and I was preparing myself for death, and I
gave him a letter to mail to Pa, after I was gone, and told the captain
I was ready. “Why, you dumb fool,” said the captain, “it was not you I
meant to throw overboard, but that phosphorus steer that we killed last
night. They are hauling it up out of the hold now with the tackle. We
will save you for a worse fate.”
Well, I never felt so happy in my life as I did when that dead steer
came up through the hatchway, and was launched over the side, and when I
saw the flock of sharks jump on the steer and begin to hunt for the
tenderloin, I let out a yell for joy that sounded like the cry of a
timber wolf.
Then I got what was coming to me. The captain gave me a swat across the
jaw for making noise enough to scare the crew into mutiny, the mate gave
me a kick when I started for the cook’s galley, and several of the under
officers hit me, and by the time I got my apron on to help cook dinner I
was bruised and mad, and decided to get even with the captain. I am a
peaceful citizen until somebody walks on my frame, then I become a
terror to the foe.
When we began to fry the beef for dinner I told one of the crew that it
was a shame to feed men on steer meat, when the steer had died in its
stall of Texas fever or rhinderpest, and before we got the meat cooked,
ready for the dinner of the officers and crew, every man but the
officers had talked over the dead steer, and resolved that they would
not eat it, and when they sat down to the table, and I began to bring in
the meat, they all looked like a mob of anarchists ready to murder
somebody, and I helped all I could by saying in a whisper, “This is
perfectly good meat, but this is a good day to fast, and you will live
longer.” The officers at the other end of the cabin were eating the
steer all right, but the crew never touched it, confining themselves to
the bread and coffee, and pretty soon one of the crew proposed that they
show their displeasure by taking the meat and throwing it at the
officers.
Well, if I live a million years I will never have so much fun again.
About thirty men got up and grabbed the meat I had put on their plates,
and began to throw it at the captain and mate, and all the officers, and
of all the greasy mess I ever saw, that was the worst. The captain got
up on a chair and pulled a revolver, and asked what was the cause of the
assault, and was going to shoot, when the crew drew revolvers and told
him that if he pulled a trigger they would annihilate every officer on
the boat, and take charge of it themselves, and run it into the first
port. He said the crew could stand anything except eating diseased
cattle, and that they drew the line at steers that had died of
rhinderpest.
[Illustration: The Captain Got Up on a Chair and Pulled a Revolver and
Was Going to Shoot.]
The captain was stunned, and said the beef flying through the air was
good, and he got it from cold storage in Baltimore, and asked that a
committee go with him down in the hold and see the evidence, and a
committee was appointed to go down and see about it.
When they came back they were satisfied, and the captain asked them how
they got the idea the meat was bad, and when it came to that I felt as
though some one would squeal on me, and as I started to make a get away,
and hide somewhere until the storm blew over, one of the crew took me by
the neck and said to the captain, “This young man told us about the
meat.”
The captain told the fellow that had me collared to take me to his
cabin, and he came in pretty mad, and called in a few officers, and they
were getting ready to kill me, when I thought of the little electric
battery in my pistol pocket.
It is one I got in St. Louis to scare people with. I can turn a button,
and the battery will send electricity into my arm and through my body,
and I turned the dingus, and felt the electricity going through me like
ginger ale up your nose, and when they had got ready to maul me I began
to weep, and told the captain I was no saint, but I wanted a quiet life,
and all the fun I could have, and I asked him as a special favor to
allow me to shake his hand before I died, as I knew my earthly career
was about done for, and by that time the battery was buzzing, and I
reached out my hand to shake his. He gave me his hand, and when I began
to squeeze his hand the electricity went up his arm so he turned pale,
and I hung on and he yelled to the officers to take me off, as I was
killing him, and the sweat stood out on his face.
[Illustration: I Gave Him a Squeeze That Sent a Shock Through Him That
Loosened His Teeth.]
The mate grabbed hold of me and I gave him my other hand and he began to
dance, and the three of us were as full of electricity as a trolley
wire. I hung on and made them get down on their knees and swear they
would not lick me, and then I let go of them and began to weep again,
and they were sorry for me.
Then they made me tell them who I was, and that I was going to France to
meet Pa, and monkey with air ships, and when they were sure I was Peck’s
Bad Boy they said I could have the free run of the ship and that I had
the right to play all the tricks on anybody that I wanted to.
They made me show them how I worked my little pocket battery and then
they wanted me to shake hands with all the crew so they got the whole
bunch in the cabin and the captain said they had been entertaining an
angel unawares, and that I was the original Bad Boy, who had traveled
all over Europe and met the crowned heads, and he wanted to introduce me
to each member of the crew personally, as a distinguished guest who
honored the ship by being on board. Then he began to pass them up to be
shook by the great and only.
The first fellow to put out his hand was a Greek, who drew a knife on me
once because the coffee was weak, and I gave him a squeeze that sent a
shock through his system that loosened his teeth, and when the captain
alluded to me as the angel child who was loaded for fear, and who had a
charmed life that could not be destroyed by knives or guns, the Greek
looked at me in a respectful way as though he didn’t want to have any
more truck with me.
Then a big Welshman came up and shook my hand, and when I gave him the
third degree he let go and jumped out of the window of the cabin, on
deck, and began to use language that was equal to Russian, and then a
Swede came bowing to me, thinking I must be at least a crown prince, and
when I squeezed his hand he looked at his fingers and his arm, and
trembled and squirmed and said, “Ah tank a got yim yams,” and he lit out
in a hurry.
A small Irishman came next, and as he was the one who promised to cut my
ears off to serve on toast, I gave him the limit, and he curled up like
a German dockshound and laid down to the mat, making motions with his
mouth as though he was repeating poetry, and he said, “Kape away from
me, ye hoodoo,” and he crawled out so quick it almost broke the door.
The captain and mate laughed every time I shook hands with any of the
crew, and when I had paralyzed them all, and got them so scared they
would come to me if I whistled, and eat out of my hand, the captain said
I was worth more towards maintaining discipline on the boat than a whole
police force, and he wanted me to do something every day to keep the
crew from being lonely, so that night at supper time I charged all of
the steel knives and forks with electricity and got two nigger chasers
ready for business.
It was to be the last night before we landed in France, and I was
prepared to make it a meal long to be remembered. I sat next to the
captain, and that brought me right close to the crew’s table, and when
the crew filed in and took their places, they all looked at me as though
I was the devil instead of an “angel child.”
I had a match all ready and when the supper was put on and the crew
grabbed their knives and forks they were shocked real hard, and they
dropped them and yelled something like the swear words of each
nationality, and then I put my nigger chasers down on the floor, headed
for the crew’s table, and lit the fuse.
Well, you know how nigger chasers will chase. Gee, but they went under
the crew’s table, smoking and hissing, the sparks flew, and the brave
crew got up and run out on deck yelling “fire,” and “murder,” and “dam
that boy,” and the man in charge of the fire hose turned it into the
cabin and drowned everything out, and the crew run away and hid, and
when things cleared off the captain said, “Boy, I like a joke as well as
anybody, but you have overdone this thing, and I am mighty glad we land
tomorrow, and you can go to your Pa and his confounded airships, and may
the Lord have mercy on him.”
Then we went to bed, and I expected some of the crew would stab me
before morning, but I guess they were too much rattled.
Gee, but I am dying to see Pa, and help him spend government money for
eatings, seems as though I haven’t had a square meal since my chum and I
struck that community near St. Louis, as escaped balloonaticks.
Pa has had the hardest time of his life in Paris, and if I ever pitied a
man it was Pa.
You see, that last fly in the airship pretty near caused him to cash in
his chips, and go over the long road to the hereafter, cause he got
blood poison from the thorns that run into him where he landed in the
top limbs of the thornapple tree, and he sprained his arm and one hind
leg while being taken down with a derrick, and then before we left the
country town for Paris he drank some goat’s milk, which gave him
ptomaine poison in his inside works, and a peasant woman who sewed up
his pants where they were torn on the tree pricked him with a needle,
and he swelled up so he was unable to sit in a car seat, and his face
was scratched by the thorns of the tree and there were blotches all over
him, so when we got to Paris the health officers thought he had smallpox
and sent him to a pest house, and they wouldn’t let me in, but
vaccinated me and turned me loose, and I went to the hotel and told
about where Pa was, and all about it, and they put our baggage in a sort
of oven filled with sulphur and disinfected it, and stole some of it,
and they made me sleep in a dog kennel, and for weeks I had to keep out
of sight, until Pa was discharged from the hospital, and the friends of
Pa out at the airship club in the country got Pa’s airship that he
bought for a government out of the tree and took it to the club and
presented a bill for two hundred dollars, and I only had seven dollars,
so they held it for ransom.
[Illustration: Pa’s Face Was Scratched So They Sent Him to the Pest
House.]
Gee, but I worried about Pa!
Well, one day Pa showed up at the hotel looking like he had been in a
railroad wreck, and he was so thin his clothes had to be pinned up with
safety pins, and he had spent all his money, and was bursted.
The man who hired Pa in Washington to go abroad and buy airships for the
government told Pa to use his own money for a month or two and then draw
on the secretary of the treasury for all he needed, so before Pa went to
the hospital he drew on his government for ten thousand dollars, and
when he came back there was a letter for him from the American Consul in
Paris telling him to call at the office, so Pa went there and they
arrested him on the charge of skull dugging. They said he had no right
to draw for any money on the government at Washington. Pa showed his
papers with the big seal on, and the consul laughed in Pa’s face, and Pa
was hot under the collar and wanted to fight, but they showed him that
the papers he had were no good, and that he had been buncoed by some
fakir in Washington who got five hundred dollars from Pa for securing
him a job as government agent, and all his papers authorized him to do
was to travel at his own expense, and to buy all the airships he wanted
to with his own money, and Pa had a fit. All the money he had spent was
a dead loss, and all he had to show for it was a punctured airship,
which he was afraid to ride in.
Pa swore at the government, at the consul, and at the man who buncoed
him, and they released him from arrest, when he promised that he would
not pose any more as a government agent, and we went back to the hotel.
“Well, this is a fine scrape you have got me in,” says Pa, as we went to
our room.
“What in thunder did I have to do about it?” says I, just like that. “I
wasn’t with you when you framed up this job and let a man in Washington
skin you out of your money by giving you a soft snap which has exploded
in your hands. Gee, Pa, what you need is a maid or a valet, or something
that will hold on to your wad.” Pa said he didn’t need anybody to act as
a guardian to him, cause he had all the money he needed in his letter of
credit to the American Express Company in Paris, and he knew how to
spend his money freely, but he did hate to be buncoed and made the
laughing stock of two continents.
So Pa and I went down to the Express Office, and Pa gave the man in
charge a paper and the grand hailing sign of distress, and he handed out
bags of gold and bales of bills, and Pa hid a lot in his leather belt,
and put some in his pockets, and said, “Come on, Henry, and we will see
this town, and buy it if we like it.”
Well, we went out after dark and took in the concert halls and things,
and Pa drank wine and I drank nothing but ginger ale, and women who
waited on us sat in Pa’s lap and patted his bald head, and tried to feel
in his pockets, but Pa held on to their wrists and told them to keep
away, and he took one across his knees and slapped her across the
pajamas with a silver tray, and I thought Pa was real saucy.
A head waiter whispered to me and wanted to know what ailed the old
sport, and I told him Pa was bitten with a wolf in our circus last year,
and we feared he was going to have hydrophobia, and always when these
spells come on the only thing to do was to throw him into a tank of
water, and I should be obliged to them if they would take Pa and duck
him in the fountain in the center of the café, and save his life.
Pa was making up with the girl he had paddled with the silver tray,
buying champagne for her and drinking some of it himself out of her
slipper, when the head waiter called half a dozen Frenchmen who were
doing police duty, and told them to duck Pa in the fountain, and they
grabbed him by the collar and the pants and made him walk turkey towards
the fountain, and he held on to the girl, and the Frenchmen threw Pa and
the girl into the brink with a flock of ducks, and they went under
water, and Pa came up first yelling murder, and then the girl came up
hanging to Pa’s neck, and she gave a French yell of agony, and Pa gave
the grand hailing sign of distress, and yelled to know if there was not
an American present that would protect an American citizen from the
hands of a Paris mob. The crowd gathered around the circular fountain
basin and one drunken fellow jumped in the water and was going to hold
Pa’s head under water while the girl found his money, when Pa yelled
“Hey, Rube,” the way they do in a circus when there is a fight, and by
ginger it wasn’t a second before half a dozen old circus men that used
to belong to the circus when Pa was manager in the States made a rush
for the fountain, knocked the Frenchmen galley west, and pulled Pa out
of the water and let him drain off, and they said, “Hello, old man, how
did you happen to let them drown you?” and Pa saw who the boys were and
he hugged them, and invited them to all take something and then go to
his hotel.
[Illustration: After Pa Had Been Ducked in the Fountain They Charged for
Two Ducks He Killed by Falling on Them.]
When Pa paid the check for the drinks they charged in two ducks they
said Pa killed in the tank by falling on them. But Pa paid it and was so
tickled to meet the old circus boys that he gave the girl he went in
swimming with a twenty-franc note, and after staying until along towards
morning we all got into and on top of a hack and went to the hotel and
sat up till daylight talking things over.
We found the circus boys were on the way to Germany to go with the
Hagenbach outfit to South Africa to capture wild animals for circuses,
and when Pa told the boss, who was one of Hagenbach’s managers, about
his airship and what a dandy thing it would be to sail around where the
lions and tigers live in the jungle, and lasso them, from up in the air,
out of danger, he engaged Pa and me to go along, and I guess we will
know all about Africa pretty soon.
The next day we went out to the club where Pa keeps his airship, with
the boss of Hagenbach’s outfit and a cowboy that used to be with Pa’s
circus, to practice lassoing things. They got out the machine and Pa
steered it, and the boss and I were passengers, and the cowboy was on
the railing in front with his lariat rope, and we sailed along about
fifty feet high over the farms, until we saw a big goat. The cowboy
motioned for Pa to steer towards the goat, and when we got near enough
the cowboy threw the rope over the goat’s horns and tightened it up, and
Mr. Goat came right along with us, bleating and fighting. We led the
goat about half a mile over some fences, and finally came down to the
ground to examine our catch, and we landed all right, and Hagenbach’s
boss said it was the greatest scheme that ever was for catching wild
animals, and he doubled Pa’s salary, and said we would pack up the next
day and go to the Hagenbach farm in Germany and take a steamer for South
Africa in a week.
They were talking it over, and the cowboy had released the goat, when
that animal made a charge with his head on our party. He struck Pa below
the belt, butted the boss in the trousers until he laid down and begged
for mercy, stabbed the cowboy with his horns, and then made a hop, skip
and jump for the gas bag, burst a hole in it, and when the gas began to
escape the goat’s horns got caught in the gas bag and the goat died from
the effects of the gas, and we were all glad until about fifty peasant
women came across the fields with agricultural implements, and were
going to kill us all.
Pa said, “Well, what do you know about that?” but the women were fierce
and wanted our blood. The boss could talk French and he offered to give
them the goat to settle it, but they said it was their goat anyway, and
they wanted blood or damages.
Pa said it was easier to give damages than blood, and just as they were
going to cut up the gas bag the boss settled with them for about twenty
dollars, and hired them to haul the airship to the nearest station, and
we shipped it to Berlin, and got ready to follow the next day.
Pa says we will have a high old time in Africa. He says he wants to ride
up to a lion’s den in his airship and dare the fiercest lion to come out
and fight, and that he wouldn’t like any better fun than to ride over a
royal Bengal tiger in the jungle, and reach down and grab his tail, and
make him snarl like a tom cat on a fence in the alley.
He talks about riding down a herd of elephants, and picking out the
biggest ones, and roping them; and the way Pa is going to scare
rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses and make them bleat like calves is a
wonder.
I think Pa is the bravest man I ever saw, when he tells it, but I
noticed when we had that goat by the horns and he was caught in a barbed
wire fence, so the airship had to slow down until he came loose, Pa
turned as pale as a sheet, and when the goat bucked him in the stomach
Pa’s lips moved as though he was praying. Well, anyway, this trip to
Africa to catch wild animals is going to show what kind of sand there is
in all of us.
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