Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

Every steer was standing on one leg and then another, pitching forward into the manger, and then back against the bar that held them in the stall, and all bellowing as though their hearts would break, and the duty of the crew was to go in the stalls and throw the cattle down on their sides, and tie their legs so they couldn’t get up, when they could lie there and ride easy.

They sent me into a stall where a steer was slowly dying by inches, with instructions to hold up his left foreleg, so they could throw him, and just as I had raised the leg they threw him onto me, and went on to the next stall, leaving me with the wind all jammed out of me, and the haunch of the steer holding me down.

They went all through the lower deck, got the steers down, and went off and left me there to die, never seeming to miss me. I have slept with a good many different kinds of people and things in my time. I have had a porcupine crawl into bed with me when camping in the North woods, and he was rough enough, for sure. I once had a skunk come into a tent where some of us boys were camping, and when the skunk found out who we were he didn’t do a thing and all the boys said it was me, and they kicked me out, and made me sleep with the dogs, until the dogs struck, when I was lonely enough.

Once I had a snake get under my blanket and shake his rattles, and I got out of the tent so quick the snake never knew I was there, but in my wildest moments of seeking for new experiences, I never thought I should be a pillow for the stomach of a sea sick thousand-pound steer.

When I got my breath so I could yell it was night, and I had probably been under that steer for several hours. I tried to kick the steer in a vital part, where ox drivers kick oxen to make them “haw” and “gee,” but the steer had gone to sleep and never paid any attention to me.

I guess everybody had gone to sleep on the ship, except the watchman and the pilot, but I could lay there all night, so I began to make a noise like a ghost, and I wailed so the watchman heard me, and he peered down the hatch, and I mumbled, “I am thy father’s ghost,” and I rubbed some phosphorus I had in my pocket on the hair of the steer that was acting as my bed clothes. The man skipped, and pretty soon he came back with the English captain, who had told me if I didn’t like my job I could go to ’ell, and when he saw the shining steer with the phosphorus on its hair, I wailed and said, “This is ’ell, come in, the water is fine, and I smell the blood of an Englishman.”

“I Am Thy Father’s Ghost!—Come on in, the Water’s Fine!—I Smell the Blood of an Englishman!”

Well, the captain weakened, and wouldn’t come down, but I heard bells ringing all over the boat, like a fire alarm, and pretty soon the whole crew came down cellar with hose and began to squirt water on the steer and me, and the steer was so scared it broke the rope on its legs and got up off me, and then the animal stampeded out of the stall and charged the firemen, and rubbed its phosphorus side against the English captain, and he thought he was in hell, for sure, and he made them turn the hose on him, and then a man hit the steer in the head with an ax, and the trouble was over, except that the captain laid it all to me, and told the crew I was a “’oodoo,” and they searched me and found my phosphorus, and that settled it with me.

They were ordered to put me in the dungeon, and when they were going up stairs I heard the captain say, “At daylight ’oist it h’out of the ’old, and chuck it h’over board to feed the sharks,” so I guess I can see my finish all right.