Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

The procession had got out of sight, or Pa would have pulled the string that lets the gas escape, and come down to the ground; but he realized that if we landed alone we would starve to death and be eaten by wild animals, so he let her sail right away from where we wanted to go, and we all said our prayers and prayed for the wind to change again.

Gee, but we sailed over a beautiful country for an hour or two, hills and valleys and all kinds of animals in sight all the time, but now we didn’t want any more animals, ’cause we had no place to keep them. But the animals all seemed to want us. The lions we passed over would roar at us, the tigers would snarl, the hyenas would laugh at Pa, the zebras on the plains we passed over would race along with us and kick up their heels like colts in a pasture, and the cowboy stood straddle of the bamboo frame and just itched to throw his lasso over a fine zebra, but Pa told him to let ’em alone, ’cause we didn’t want to be detained.

We passed over rivers where hippopotamusses were as thick as suckers in a spring freshet, and they lookd at us as though they wouldn’t do a thing to the airship if we landed in their midst.

We passed over rhinoceroses with horns bigger than any we had ever seen, and we passed over a herd of more than a hundred elephants, and they all gave us the laugh.

We passed over gnus and springboks and deer of all kinds, and when they heard the propellor of the airship rattle, they would look up and snort and run away in all directions. Some giraffes were feeding in the tree tops at one grove, and Pa let the ship down a little so we could count the spots on them, and I had a syphon of seltzer water, and I squirted it in the face of a big giraffe, and he sneezed like a cat that has got a dose of smelling salts, and then the whole herd stampeded in a sort of hipty-hop, and we laughed at their awkwardness.

We sailed along over more animals than we ever thought there were in the world, and over thatched houses in villages, where the negroes would come out and take a look at us and then fall on their knees and we could see their mouths work as though they were saying things.

Along towards noon Pa yelled to the cowboy that we would have to land pretty soon, and to get the drag rope ready, ’cause we were going the wrong way to hit the coast, and the first big village we came in sight of he was going to land and take our chances.

Pretty soon a big village loomed up ahead on a high plane near a river, with more than a hundred houses and fields of corn and potatoes and grain all around it, and one big house like about forty hay stacks all in one, and Pa gave the word to stand by, and when we got near the village the whole population came out beating tom-toms and waving their shirts, and Pa pulled the string, some of the gas escaped, and we came down in a sort of plaza right in the center of the village, and tied the drag rope to a tree and anchored the gas bag at both ends.

The crowd of negroes stood back in amazement and waited for the king of the tribe to come out of the big shack, and while he was getting ready to show up we looked around at the preparations for a feast which we had noticed.

It was a regular barbecue, and the little dwarf we had brought along began to sniff at the stuff that was being roasted over the fire, and Pa looked at him and asked him what the layout was all about, and the dwarf, who had learned to speak a little English, got on his knees and told Pa the sky ship had landed in the midst of his own tribe, where he had been stolen from a year ago by another tribe, and that the feast was a canibal feast, got up in honor of the tribal Thanksgiving, and that the bodies roasting were members of another tribe that had been captured in a battle, and the dwarf got up and began to talk to his old friends and neighbors, and he evidently told them we were great people, having rescued him from the tribe that stole him, and had brought him back home in the sky ship, safe and sound.