CHAPTER XIV.
Pa Was Blackmailed and Scared Out of Lots of Money—Pa Teaching the Natives to Speak English—Pa Said the Natives Acted Like Human Beings—Pa Buys Some Animals in the Jungle.
We thought when we came to Africa we would be near to nature, where the natives were simple and honest, but Pa has found that the almost naked negroes can give white men cards and spades and little casino and then beat them at the game.
Pa has been blackmailed and scared out of his boots and a lot of money, by an injured husband, as natural as he could have been flimflammed in New York.
We noticed that Pa was quite interested in a likely negro woman, one of twenty wives of a heathen, to the extent of having her wash his shirts, and he would linger at the tent of the husband and teach the woman some words of English, such as, “You bet your life” and “Not on your life,” and a few cuss words, which she seemed to enjoy repeating.
She was a real nice looking nigger, and smiled on Pa to beat the band, but that was all; of course she enjoyed having Pa call on her, and evidently showed her interest in him, but that seemed only natural, as Pa is a nice, clean white man with clothes on and she looked upon him as a sort of king, until the other wives became jealous, and they filled the husband up with stories about Pa and the young negress, but Pa was as innocent as could be. Where Pa made the mistake was in taking hold of her hand and looking at the lines in her palm, to read her future by the lines in her hand, and as Pa is some near sighted he had to bend over her hand, and then she stroked Pa’s bald head with the other hand, and the other wives went off and left Pa and the young wife alone, and they called the husband to put a stop to it.
Well I never saw a giant negro so mad as that husband was when he came into the tent and saw Pa, and Pa was scared and turned pale, and the woman had a fit when she saw her husband with a base ball club with spikes on it. He took his wife by the neck and threw her out of the tent, and then closed the tent and he and Pa were alone, and for an hour no one knew what happened, but when Pa came back to our camp, wobbly in the legs, and with no clothes on except a pair of drawers, we knew the worst had happened.
Pa told Mr. Hagenbach that the negro acted like a human being. He cried and told Pa he had broken into his family circle and picked the fairest flower, broken his heart and left him an irresponsible and broken man, the laughing stock of his friends, and nothing but his life or his money could settle it.
