Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

When Pa Found the Snake Coiled Up on His Blanket He Threw a Fit.

The old airship got in its work the first time we tried it, though we didn’t make gas enough to more than half fill it, and it wouldn’t fly, but we got some tigers and a big lion, all right.

We took the airship out on an open prairie and built a fire to make the gas for the balloon, and Pa made everybody stay away from it except me, and when we got it inflated we were to blow a horn, and the people we wanted to go along could come, but the crowd of workers and negroes must stay back, so as not to scare the animals, and be ready to bring cages up when we blew the horn three consecutive times.

We were not looking around much, but just paying attention to our gas, and steering it into the gas bag, and we had got the bag about half full, and it was lying on the grass like a big whale that has died at sea and floated ashore, and we were busy thinking of how we would sail over the veldt and have our cowboy rope a few lions and choke them into submission, when I happened to look around towards the jungle, and there were two tigers crawling through the grass towards the gas bag, and a lion walking right towards it as though he was saying to the tigers, “Ah, g’wan, I saw it first,” and a rhinoceros was rooting along like a big hog, right towards us. I told Pa to look out, and when he saw the animals he seemed to lose all appetite for lions and tigers in their wild state, for he started for a tree and told me to climb up, too. Well, it took Pa quite a while to get up on a limb, but he finally got all his person up there, and I was right with him, and Pa looked at the animals creeping up to the gas bag, and he said, “Bub, the success of this expedition will be settled right here if that lion drinks any of the gasoline.”

Well, I have seen cats crawling along the floor towards a mouse hole, and stopping and looking innocent when the mouse stuck his head out of the hole, and then moving on again when the mouse disappeared, and these tigers acted that way, stopping every time the wind caused the gas bag to flap on the ground. The lion acted like a big St. Bernard dog that smells something ahead that he don’t exactly know what to make of, but is going to find out, and the rhinoceros just rooted along as though he was getting what he wanted out of the ground, and would be along after a while to investigate that thing that was rising like a big ant hill on the prairie and smelling like a natural gas well. Finally the tigers got near enough to the gas bag with their claws, running their noses down into the holes where the gas was escaping, and fairly drinking in the gas. Their weight sent the bag down to the ground, and they were in the middle, inhaling gas, and pretty soon the lion came up and clawed a hole in the gas bag and acted as though he was not going to let the tigers have all the good stuff and pretty soon we could see from up the tree that they were being overcome by the fumes, and Pa said in about four minutes we would have a mess of animals chloroformed good and plenty, and we would go down and hobble them and hog-tie them like they do cattle on the ranches. What bothered us about going down the tree was the rhinoceros that was coming rooting along, but after a while he came up and smelled of the gasoline can, tipped it over, and as the gasoline trickled out on the ground he laid down and rolled in it like a big pig, and after he had got well soaked in gasoline he rolled near the fire, and in a minute he was all ablaze and about the scaredest rhinoceros that ever roamed the prairie.

When the fire began to scorch his hide he let out a bellow that could be heard a mile and started towards the camp on a gallop, looking like a barn afire, and Pa said now was the time to capture our sleeping animals, so we shinned down the tree and found the lion dead to the world, and we tied his feet together and put a bag over his head, and then climbed over the gas bag and found the two tigers sleeping as sweetly as babes, and I held their legs together while Pa tied all four legs so tight they couldn’t move a muscle, and then Pa told me to blow the horn for the cages to be sent out.

Gee, but I was proud of that morning’s work, two tigers and a lion with no more danger than shooting cats on a back fence with a bean snapper, and Pa and I shook hands and patted each other on the back. I told Pa he was a wonder, and that Mr. Hagenbach would probably make him a general in the Prussian army, but Pa looked modest and said, “All it needs is brain and sand to overcome the terrors of the jungle,” and just then we saw the cages coming across the veldt, and Pa said, “Now, when the boys come up with the cages you put one foot on the lion and strike an attitude like a lion tamer, and I will play with the tigers.”

When the cages came up I was on to my job all right, and the boys gave me three cheers, and they asked where Pa was, and I pointed to the center of the gas bag and said Pa was in there having a little fun with a mess of tigers, and when they walked over the billowy gas bag they found Pa with one of the tigers that had partly come to playing with him and chewing his pants, but they rescued Pa and in a few minutes they had our three animals in the cages, and we started for camp, Pa walking behind the cages with his coat over his arm, telling young Hagenbach the confoundedest story about how he subdued the animals by just hypnotizing them, and I never said a word. A boy that will not stand up for his father is an idgit.

When we got to camp the natives had all scattered to the four winds. It seemed that when the fiery rhinoceros came towards them they thought the Great Spirit had sent fire to destroy them, and they took to the jungle, the rhino after them, bellowing all kinds of cheering messages from the Great Spirit.