Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

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.

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.