“Don’t strike your colors, Herc.”
“Stay on him; over the jumps!”
The shouts of the tars behind the donkey made him go faster. From the store the proprietor, an enormously fat Egyptian, with a water-bowl pipe in his hand, came rushing out. He spread his arms and tried to stay the onrush of the donkey, to whose neck and ear Herc was still clinging.
Crash! the donkey collided with him like a battering ram. With a wild yell he fell over in the street, his pipe flying several feet and landing on old Harness Cask’s head.
Next came the turn of a water carrier who went down in the midst of a flood of his own wares, to the accompaniment of crashing jars. Never had there been such a time in that market-place. Then came the climax.
With an uproar like the falling down stairs of a hundred cookstoves, accompanied by their respective pots and pans, the donkey with Herc still valiantly clinging to it, plunged clean into the midst of the metalware shop. Brass kettles, vases, knick-knacks of a thousand kinds flew in every direction. Big pots of Oriental confectionery showered about Herc and the donkey, and to cap the climax down toppled a big jar of a sort of honey preserve, drenching Herc from head to foot with sticky sweetness.
Outside the store the Jackies howled with delight. Suddenly, however, through the mob came charging a squad of black police.
“Gracious, if Herc hasn’t done it again!” groaned Ned despairingly.