Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

Pa offered to give up his life, but the injured husband had rather have the money, and after an hour Pa compromised by giving him sixteen dollars and his coat, pants and shirt, and Pa is to have the wife in the bargain. Pa didn’t want to take the wife, but the husband insisted on it, and Mr. Hagenbach says we can take her to America and put her into the show as an untamed Zulu, or a missing link, but he insists that Pa shall be careful hereafter, with his fatal beauty and winning ways, or we shall have more negro women to bring back than animals in cages.

Talk about your innocent negroes, they will cheat you out of your boots.

Pa went off in the jungle to buy some animals of a negro king or some kind of a nine spot, and he found the king had in a corral half a dozen green zebras, the usual yellow stripes being the most beautiful green you ever saw. The king told Pa it was a rare species, only procured in a mountain fastness hundreds of miles away, and Pa bought the whole bunch at a fabulous price, and brought them to camp. Mr. Hagenbach was tickled to death at the rare animals, and praised Pa, and said there was a fortune in the green and black striped zebras. I thought there was something wrong when I heard one of those zebras bray like a mule when he was eating hay, but it wasn’t my put in, and I didn’t say anything.

That night there was the greatest rain we have had since we came here, and in the morning the green and black striped zebras hadn’t a stripe on them, and they proved to be nothing but wild asses and assessess, white and dirty, and all around the corral the water standing on the ground was colored green and black.

Mr. Hagenbach took Pa out to the corral and pointed to the wild white mules and said, “What do you think of your green zebras now?” Pa looked them over and said, “Say, that negro king is nothing but a Pullman porter, and he painted those mules and sawed them onto me,” so we had to kill Pa’s green zebras and feed them to the negroes and the animals. Mr. Hagenbach told Pa plainly that he couldn’t stand for such conduct. He said he was willing to give Pa carte blanche, whatever that is, in his love affairs in South Africa, but he drew the line at being bunkoed on painted animals. He believed in encouraging art, and all that, but animals that wouldn’t wash were not up to the Hagenbach standard.

Pa went off and sulked all day, but he made good the next day.

Our intention was to let elephants alone until we were about to return home, as they are so plenty we can find them any day, and after you have once captured your elephants you have got to cut hay to feed them, but Pa gets some particular animal bug in his head, and the managements has to let him have his way, so the other day was his elephant day, and he started off through the jungle with only a few men, and the negro wife that he hornswoggled the husband out of. Pa said he was going to use her for a pointer to point elephants, the same as they use dogs to point chickens, and when we got about a mile into the jungle he told her to “Hie on,” and find an elephant. Well, sir, she has got the best elephant nose I ever saw on a woman. She ranged ahead and beat the ground thoroughly, and pretty soon she began to sniff and sneak up on the game, and all of a sudden she came to a point and held up one foot, and her eyes stuck out, and Pa said the game was near, and he told her to “charge down,” and we went on to surround the elephant. Pa was ahead and he saw a baby elephant not bigger than a Shetland pony, looking scared, and Pa made a lunge and fell on top of the little elephant, which began to make a noise like a baby that wants a bottle of milk, and we captured the little thing and started for camp with it, but before we got in sight of camp all the elephants in Africa were after us, crashing through the timber and trumpeting like a menagerie.

Pa Made a Lunge and Fell on Top of the Little Elephant Which Began to Make a Noise Like a Baby.

Pa and a cowboy and some negroes lifted the little elephant up into a tree, and the whole herd surrounded us, and were going to tear down the tree, when the camp was alarmed and Hagenbach came out with all the men and the negroes on horseback, and they drove the herd into a canyon, and built a fence across the entrance, and there we had about fifty elephants in the strongest kind of a corral, and we climbed down from the tree with the baby elephant and took it to camp, and put it in a big bag that Pa’s airship was shipped in, and we are feeding the little animal on condensed milk and dried apples.