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.
CHAPTER IX.
The Bad Boy Arrives in France—The Boy’s Pa Is Suspected of Being an Anarchist—The Boy Finds Pa Seated at a Large Table Bragging About America—He Told Them the Men in America Were All Millionaires and Unmarried.
The greatest relief I ever experienced was getting off of that cattle ship, which I did somewhere in France, because the ship had become so foul smelling that one had to stay on deck to breathe, and there was no more fun to have, cause the officers and crew got on to me, and everyone expected to be blown up or electrocuted if they got near to me, and the last three days they wouldn’t let me eat in the cabin or sleep in my hammock, so I had to go down with the cattle and eat hot bran mash, and sleep in the hay. Gee, but when you eat hot bran mash for a few days you never want to look at breakfast food again as long as you live.
I traded my electric battery to a deck hand for a suit case, and so I looked like a tourist, because I went to a hotel and got a square meal, and had a porter paste some hotel ads. on my suit case, and I took a train for Paris, looking for Pa, cause I knew he wouldn’t be far away from the bullyvards.