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.
Pa was a hero after capturing the two tigers and the lion after they had
inhaled gas from the gas bag of the air ship, because the crowd didn’t
know how it was done. Everybody thought Pa had scared the wild animals
with the airship until they were silly, and then hypnotized them, and
got them into cages, but when the animals came out from under the
influence of the gas and began to raise the roof, and bite and snarl,
the whole camp was half scared to death, and they all insisted on Pa
going to the cages and quieting them by his hypnotic eye, but Pa was too
wise to try it on wild animals, and he had to confess that it was the
gas bag that did the work, and they made Pa fix up a gas bag under the
cages and quiet the animals, and when the employees of the expedition
found that Pa was not so much of a hero as he pretended, Pa was not so
much of a king as he had been, except in the minds of the African
negroes who were at work for us. That old negro who had sixty wives
fairly doted on Pa, and the wives thought Pa was the greatest man that
ever was, and the wives fairly got struck on Pa, and wanted to take
turns holding Pa in their laps, until the giant husband of the sixty big
black females got jealous of Pa, and wanted to hit him on the head with
a war club, but Pa showed him a thing or two that made him stand without
hitching.
The black husband had a tooth ache, and asked Pa to cure him of the
pain, and Pa had him lie down on the ground, and he put some chloroform
on a handkerchief and held it to the man’s nose, and pretty soon the
negro was dead to the world, and the wives thought Pa had killed their
husband with his mighty power, and they insisted that Pa marry the whole
sixty wives. Pa kicked on it, but Mr. Hagenbach told Pa that was the law
in that part of Africa, and that he would have to marry them.
I never saw Pa so discouraged as he was when the oldest wife took his
hand and said some words in the negro dialect, and pronounced Pa married
to the whole bunch, and when they led Pa to the man’s tent, followed by
all the wives, half of them singing a dirge for the dead husband, and
the other half singing a wedding hymn, and Pa looking around scared, and
trying to get away from his new family, it was pathetic, but all the
hands connected with the Hagenbach expedition laughed, and Pa
disappeared in the tent of his wives, and they hustled around to prepare
a banquet of roasted zebra, and boiled rhinoceros.
We went to the tent and looked in, and Pa was the picture of despair,
seated in the middle of the tent, all the female negroes petting him,
and hugging him, and dressing him in the African costume.
They brought out loin clothes that belonged to the chloroformed husband
and made Pa put them on; they blacked his arms and legs and body with
some poke berry juice, so he looked like a negro, and greased his body
and tied some negro hair on his head over his bald spot, and by gosh,
when I saw Pa transformed into a negro I looked at myself in a mirror to
see if I had turned to a negro. I held the mirror up to Pa so he could
see himself, and when he got a good look at the features that had always
been his pride, he shed a few tears and said, “Booker Washington, by
Gosh,” and when the wives were preparing to bring in the banquet Pa said
to me, “Hennery, let this be a lesson to you. Don’t ever try to be
smart, and don’t be a masher under any circumstances, cause you see what
it has brought me to. When you get back to America tell Roosevelt that I
died for my country.” Well, they brought in the wedding feast, and all
the wives helped me and Pa and Mr. Hagenbach, and the cow boy that
throws the lasso, and the foreman, and we ate hearty, and all was going
smooth when there was a commotion at the door of the tent, and in came
the former husband, who had come out from under the influence of the
chloroform, and he was crazy and had a club.
He had been told of his death, and the marriage of his wives to the old
man who owned the gas bag, and he wouldn’t have it that way.
He knocked some of his wives down, and some fainted away, and then he
started for the man who had usurped him in the affections of his sixty
wives.
Pa was scared and started to crawl under the tent and escape into the
jungle, when I saw that something had to be done, so I got right in
front of the crazy husband and, looking him square in the face, I began
to chant, “Ene-mene-miny-mo, catch a nigger by the toe,” and before I
got to the end of the first verse, the great giant said, “May be you are
right,” and he fell to the earth in a fit probably from the effects of
the chloroform, but everybody thought I had overcome him by my remarks,
and then they jumped on the husband and held him down while Pa escaped,
and for Pa’s safety they put him in a cage next to the newly acquired
tigers and lions, who were cross and ugly, but Pa said he had rather
chance it with them than with that crazy husband who had accused him of
alienating the affections of his sixty wives.
[Illustration: Looking Him Square in the Face, I Began to Chant,
“Ene-Mene-Miny-Mo.”]
The next day everything was fixed up with the husband of the sixty
wives, his tooth ache was cured, and he quit being mad at Pa, and we all
went to a river about a mile from camp to catch a mess of
hippopotamuses.
The usual way to catch the hippos is to let negroes go out in boats and
give the hippos a chance to swim under the boats and tip them over, and
after they had eaten a few negroes they would come ashore and lie down
in the mud for a nap, and they could be tied to a wagon and hauled to
the cages.
Pa was to superintend the boat excursion, because the hippos would not
eat a white man. Pa forgot that he was made up like a negro, and so he
went in the first boat, with six negroes who had been purchased at five
dollars apiece for hippo bait.
When the boat got out in the middle of stream, and the hippo heads began
to pop up out of the water, with a “look who’s here” expression on their
open faces, Pa turned pale, which probably saved him, for when the boat
was upset, and the hippos took their pick of the negroes, and the water
washed the poke berry juice off Pa he was as white as a drioenenoro, and
when the nearest hippo got his negro in his mouth and started for the
shore Pa climbed on his back and rode ashore in triumph, grabbing the
husband of the sixty wives by the arm and pulling him on board the
hippo, and saving his life, and right there in the mud, while the hippos
were eating their breakfasts of cheap negroes, that husband told Pa he
felt so under obligation to him that he could have his sixty wives in
welcome, and he would go out in the jungle and corral another family.
Pa said he was much obliged but he must decline, as in his own country
no man was allowed to have more than fifteen or twenty wives. But the
terrible scandal Pa had brought upon the expedition was settled out of
court, and Pa was reinstated in good standing in our expedition.
It takes a hippo quite a while to go to sleep after eating a negro, as
you can imagine, they are so indigestible, and it was annoying to stand
around in the mud and wait, but we finally got two specimens of the
hippo into the cages, and we killed two more for food for the negroes,
who like the flavor of hippo meat, after the hippos have been battered
on negroes.
On the way back to camp we sighted a herd of elephants, and Pa said he
would go out and surround a couple of them and drive them into camp. Mr.
Hagenbach tried to reason with Pa against the suicidal act, in going
alone into a herd of wild elephants, but Pa said since his experience
with old Bolivar, the circus elephant, he felt that he had a mysterious
power over elephants that was marvelous, and so poor Pa went out alone,
promising to bring some elephants into camp.
Well, he made good, all right. We went on to camp and got our hippos put
to bed, and fed the lions and tigers, and were just sitting down to our
evening meal, when there was a roaring sound off where Pa had surrounded
the elephants; the air was full of dust, and the ground trembled, and we
could see the whole herd of about forty wild elephants charging on our
camp, bellowing and making a regular bedlam.
When the herd got pretty near us, we all climbed trees, except the negro
husband and his wives, and they took to the jungle.
Say, those animals did not do a thing to our camp. They rushed over the
tents, laid down and rolled over on our supper, which was spread out on
the ground, tipped over the cages containing the animals we had
captured, found the gasoline barrel and filled their trunks with
gasoline and squirted it all over the place, and rolled the gasoline on
the fire, and away the elephants went with gasoline fire pouring out of
their trunks, into the woods, bellowing, and when the dust and smoke
cleared away, and we climbed down out of the trees and righted up the
cages, here came Pa astride a zebra, playing on a mouth organ, “There’ll
Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” which had frightened the
elephants into a stampede.
[Illustration: Pa, Astride of a Zebra, Had Frightened the Elephants Into
a Stampede by Playing “A Hot Time” on a Mouth Organ.]
Mr. Hagenbach stopped Pa’s zebra, and Pa said, “Didn’t you catch any of
’em? I steered ’em right to camp, and thought you fellows would head ’em
off, and catch a few.”
I never saw Mr. Hagenbach mad before. He looked at Pa as though he could
eat him alive, and said, “Well, old man, you have raised hell on your
watch, sure enough.” And then Pa complained because supper was not
ready. Gee, but Pa is getting more gall all the time.
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