The next day we shipped the buffaloes to the coast and had them sent to Berlin, and when we got the mail from headquarters there was an order for a lot more tigers, so I suppose we will be tigering as soon as the open season is on.
The idea is that we must get all the animals we can this year, for it is rumored that Roosevelt is coming to Africa next year to shoot big game, and all of us feel that wild animals will be scarce after he has devastated Africa.
We got short of Salt Pork, and some time ago Pa salted down some sides of rhinoceros, and yesterday was the day to open the barrel. Pa showed the cooks how to fry rhinoceros pork, and I tell you it made you hungry to smell rhinoceros frying, and with boiled potatoes and ostrich eggs and milk gravy, made from elephant milk, we lived high, but the next day an epidemic broke out, and they laid it to Pa’s rhinoceros pork dinner, but Pa says any man who eats eight or nine fried ostrich eggs is liable to indigestion.
Gee, but this is a great country to enjoy an outing in.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Boy and His Pa Start for the Coast in an Airship—Pa Saluted the Crowd as We Passed Over Them—The Airship Lands Amid a Savage Tribe—The King of the Tribe Escorts Pa and the Boy to the Palace.
The animal capturing season is pretty near over, and we have had a meeting of all the white men connected with the expedition and decided to break up the camp and take our animals to the coast and sail back to Europe and to the States.
It was decided that Pa and I and the cowboy and a negro dwarf belonging to a tribe we have been trying to locate should start for the coast in the airship, and the rest of the crowd should go with the cages, and all round up at a place on the coast in three weeks, when we could catch a boat for Hamburg, Germany. So we got the airship ready and made gas enough to last us a week and filled the tank that furnishes the power for the screw wheel with gasoline, and in a couple of days we were ready to let her go Gallagher.
It was a sad parting for Pa, ’cause all the captured animals wanted to shake hands with him, and some of them acted more human than some of the white men, and when the cages were all hitched up and ready to move and the negroes had been paid off and given a drink of rum and a zebra sandwich, Mr. Hagenbach embraced Pa, and Pa got up on the framework of the ship and took hold of the gear, and we got on and Pa told them to cut her loose, and a little after daylight we sailed away towards the coast and left the bunch we had been with so long with moistened eyes. Pa saluted the crowd and throwed a kiss to the big ourang outang which had become almost like a brother to Pa, the drivers whipped up the horses and oxen hitched to the cages, and as the procession rattled along to the main road going south Pa said, “Good-bye, till we meet again,” and just then the wind changed, and in spite of all Pa could do the airship turned towards the north and ran like a scared wolf the wrong way.