Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

Pa went to sleep a-straddle of a limb because he was tired, and the cowboy went to sleep on another limb because he was drunk, and your little Hennery was on watch, crying to be put to bed.

When daylight came the animals slunk away into the jungle, and when it got light enough I could see black faces peering through the bushes trying to find out if it was safe to return, so I woke Pa and the cowboy, and told Pa his subjects were coming into camp to cut his liver out, and toast it on a forked stick, and Pa climbed down from the tree and kicked the fire, and as the negroes began to come nearer he said, “Welcome to our beautiful city.”

Pretty soon all of the tribe returned, but they did not kowtow to Pa like they used to, until the old king showed up.

He was so scared he was fairly pale, and he had a grouch too, and Pa noticed it, for he said to the cowboy, “You go and fill that gas bag and get ready to sail, because there is going to be a mutiny, and we have got to get out of this country pretty precious, or they will eat us,” and the cowboy went to work to inflate the gas bag.

Pa stood around trying to look like a saint, and he pointed to the sun, just rising over the hills, and got on his knees to worship the sun, and motioned for all the tribe to do likewise, but they turned their backs on Pa and the sun, and surrounded the old king whose place Pa had usurped, and by the motions they made and the few words I could understand it was evident they proposed to drive us out of the tribe. The old king came to Pa and said his tribe wanted to have peace again, and wanted him to run the shebang, and they wanted an old fashioned cannibal feast, and that they insisted on eating Pa and the cowboy and myself roasted. Pa said all right, he was willing to be roasted in the evening but not in the morning. He said white meat always tasted better in the evening, after a ride up in the clouds, and he propsed to the old king that we all three, with the king, take a nice ride in the sky cart, take along all the gold we had, and visit an adjoining tribe, buy all their wives, and herd them, and let the cowboy drive them back to camp and then they could roast us and have the time of their lives.

They Turned Their Backs On Pa and the Sun.

This looked good to the old king, and he went and dug up all the gold and diamonds they had, and put them in a bag, which was tied to the bamboo frame of the airship, and after breakfast we got ready to sail.

We fixed a sort of chair for the king to ride in, tied with rawhide to a cross stick right in front of where the cowboy always sits, and I heard Pa whisper to the cowboy that he would head the ship direct to the coast, and when we got away from camp a few miles, Pa would give the signal and the cowboy was to cut the rawhide rope and let the king take a fall out of himself.

Pa steered the airship South, and occasionally the negro king would yell and point to the East, where the tribe was located whose wives we had designs on, but Pa kept his direction, and after running an hour or so we came to a beautiful lake of blue water, and Pa told the cowboy to get ready to throw off about two hundred pounds of dead weight. The cowboy said, “Aye, aye, sir,” and got his knife ready. Pa let the airship down about fifty feet above the water of the lake, so the fall would not kill the negro king, and when we got nearly across the lake, Pa said, “Cut the rope,” and the cowboy reached over with his knife and cut it, and down went Mr. McGinty, hanging on to the rope, and turning over in the air a dozen times, and striking the surface of the lake with a spash that shot the water up nearly to the airship. “So long, you senegambian cannibal,” said Pa as the king struck the water, and the airship shot up about fifty feet higher.