Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

Pa said he had them in the cage several times and let them out, and when we got ready to go to camp all he had to do was to let the phonograph play “Supper is now ready in the dining car,” and they would come in and he would slip out and lock the door and we could haul the cage to camp.

All He Had to Do Was to Play “Supper is Now Ready in the Dining Car” on the Phonograph.

Well, you ought to have seen my old gentleman call the whole bunch of gorillas into the cage and feed them and see them act like a lot of boys in camp, reaching for potatoes and bacon and wiping their lips on their hairy arms, but none of them asked for napkins or finger bowls. When the food was all gone they began to kick like boarders at a second-class boarding house, and then Pa slipped out of the door and locked it, and we came down out of the trees and surrounded the cage, and Pa acted as barker and told us the names he had given to the gorillas.

Pa brought the phonograph out of the cage and set it going and the gorillas began to dance. Mr. Hagenbach was so pleased that he fairly hugged Pa, and we got ready to haul the cage to camp.

Pa always makes some mistake before he has a proposition well in hand, and he did this time, of course. As we were about to start the gorilla Rastus, who had become Pa’s chum, looked at Pa so pitiful that Pa said he guessed he would let Rastus out and he and Rastus would walk along ahead and get the brush out of the road, so he opened the door of the cage and beckoned to Rastus, and the big gorilla came out with his oldest boy, and Pa and the two of them took hold of hands and started on ahead, and we started to haul the wagon by drag ropes, when the worst possible thing happened. Rastus reached in Pa’s pistol pocket, where Pa had just put a large plug of tobacco after he had bit off a piece, and Rastus thought because Pa ate the tobacco he could, so he bit off about half of the plug and ate it and gave his half-grown boy the rest of it, and that was eaten by the boy. Pa tried to take it away from them, but it was too late, and they were both mad at Pa for trying to beat them out of their dessert.

It was not long before Rastus turned pale around the mouth, but his face was so covered with hair that you couldn’t tell exactly how sick he was; though, when he put both hands on his stomach, gave a yell and turned some somersaults, we knew he was a pretty sick gorilla, and his boy rolled over and clawed his stomach and had a fit.

Rastus had the most pained and revengeful look on his face I ever saw, and he looked at Pa as though he was to blame.

Pa had one of the men get the medicine chest, and Pa fixed two seidlitz in a tin cup, but before he could put in the water Rastus had swallowed the powder from the white and blue paper and reached for a wash basin of water, and before Pa could prevent Rastus from drinking it on top of those powders, he had swallowed every drop of the water, and the commotion inside of him must have been awful, for he frothed at the mouth and the bubbles came out of his nose, and he rolled over and yelled like a man with gout, and he seemed to swell up, and Pa looked on as though he had a case on his hands that he couldn’t diagnose, while Rastus’ boy just laid on the ground and rolled his eyes as though he were saying his “Now I lay me,” and Mr. Hagenbach said to Pa he guessed he had broke up the show, and Pa said, “Never you mind, I will pull them both through all right.”

Finally the siedlitz powder fiz had all got out of Rastus’ system and he seemed to be thinking deeply for a moment, and then he got off his haunches and looked steadily into Pa’s eyes for a minute, and then he took Pa by one hand and his boy with the other and started right off through the jungle, Pa pulling back and yelling to us to rescue him from the gorilla kidnapers, but Rastus walked fast and before he had got ought of sight he had picked his sick boy up and carried him under his arm and both were groaning, and he held on to Pa’s hand and went so fast that Pa’s feet only hit the high places.