CHAPTER XIII.

Pa Was a Hero After Capturing Two Tigers and a Lion—Pa Had an Old Negro With Sixty Wives Working for Him—Pa Makes His Escape in Safety—Pa Goes to Catch Hippopotamusses.

Pa was a hero after capturing the two tigers and the lion after they had inhaled gas from the gas bag of the air ship, because the crowd didn’t know how it was done. Everybody thought Pa had scared the wild animals with the airship until they were silly, and then hypnotized them, and got them into cages, but when the animals came out from under the influence of the gas and began to raise the roof, and bite and snarl, the whole camp was half scared to death, and they all insisted on Pa going to the cages and quieting them by his hypnotic eye, but Pa was too wise to try it on wildanimals, and he had to confess that it was the gas bag that did the work, and they made Pa fix up a gas bag under the cages and quiet the animals, and when the employees of the expedition found that Pa was not so much of a hero as he pretended, Pa was not so much of a king as he had been, except in the minds of the African negroes who were at work for us. That old negro who had sixty wives fairly doted on Pa, and the wives thought Pa was the greatest man that ever was, and the wives fairly got struck on Pa, and wanted to take turns holding Pa in their laps, until the giant husband of the sixty big black females got jealous of Pa, and wanted to hit him on the head with a war club, but Pa showed him a thing or two that made him stand without hitching.

The black husband had a tooth ache, and asked Pa to cure him of the pain, and Pa had him lie down on the ground, and he put some chloroform on a handkerchief and held it to the man’s nose, and pretty soon thenegro was dead to the world, and the wives thought Pa had killed their husband with his mighty power, and they insisted that Pa marry the whole sixty wives. Pa kicked on it, but Mr. Hagenbach told Pa that was the law in that part of Africa, and that he would have to marry them.

I never saw Pa so discouraged as he was when the oldest wife took his hand and said some words in the negro dialect, and pronounced Pa married to the whole bunch, and when they led Pa to the man’s tent, followed by all the wives, half of them singing a dirge for the dead husband, and the other half singing a wedding hymn, and Pa looking around scared, and trying to get away from his new family, it was pathetic, but all the hands connected with the Hagenbach expedition laughed, and Pa disappeared in the tent of his wives, and they hustled around to prepare a banquet of roasted zebra, and boiled rhinoceros.

We went to the tent and looked in, andPa was the picture of despair, seated in the middle of the tent, all the female negroes petting him, and hugging him, and dressing him in the African costume.

They brought out loin clothes that belonged to the chloroformed husband and made Pa put them on; they blacked his arms and legs and body with some poke berry juice, so he looked like a negro, and greased his body and tied some negro hair on his head over his bald spot, and by gosh, when I saw Pa transformed into a negro I looked at myself in a mirror to see if I had turned to a negro. I held the mirror up to Pa so he could see himself, and when he got a good look at the features that had always been his pride, he shed a few tears and said, “Booker Washington, by Gosh,” and when the wives were preparing to bring in the banquet Pa said to me, “Hennery, let this be a lesson to you. Don’t ever try to be smart, and don’t be a masher under any circumstances, cause you see what it hasbrought me to. When you get back to America tell Roosevelt that I died for my country.” Well, they brought in the wedding feast, and all the wives helped me and Pa and Mr. Hagenbach, and the cow boy that throws the lasso, and the foreman, and we ate hearty, and all was going smooth when there was a commotion at the door of the tent, and in came the former husband, who had come out from under the influence of the chloroform, and he was crazy and had a club.

He had been told of his death, and the marriage of his wives to the old man who owned the gas bag, and he wouldn’t have it that way.

He knocked some of his wives down, and some fainted away, and then he started for the man who had usurped him in the affections of his sixty wives.

Pa was scared and started to crawl under the tent and escape into the jungle, when Isaw that something had to be done, so I got right in front of the crazy husband and, lookinghim square in the face, I began to chant, “Ene-mene-miny-mo, catch a nigger by the toe,” and before I got to the end of the first verse, the great giant said, “May be you are right,” and he fell to the earth in a fit probably from the effects of the chloroform, but everybody thought I had overcome him by my remarks, and then they jumped on the husband and held him down while Pa escaped, and for Pa’s safety they put him in a cage next to the newly acquired tigers and lions, who were cross and ugly, but Pa said he had rather chance it with them than with that crazy husband who had accused him of alienating the affections of his sixty wives.

Looking Him Square in the Face, I Began to Chant, “Ene-Mene-Miny-Mo.”

The next day everything was fixed up with the husband of the sixty wives, his tooth ache was cured, and he quit being mad at Pa, and we all went to a river about a mile from camp to catch a mess of hippopotamuses.

The usual way to catch the hippos is to let negroes go out in boats and give the hippos a chance to swim under the boats and tip them over, and after they had eaten a few negroes they would come ashore and lie down in the mud for a nap, and they could be tied to a wagon and hauled to the cages.

Pa was to superintend the boat excursion, because the hippos would not eat a white man. Pa forgot that he was made up like a negro, and so he went in the first boat, with six negroes who had been purchased at five dollars apiece for hippo bait.

When the boat got out in the middle of stream, and the hippo heads began to pop up out of the water, with a “look who’s here” expression on their open faces, Pa turned pale, which probably saved him, for when the boat was upset, and the hippos took their pick of the negroes, and the water washed the poke berry juice off Pa he was as white as a drioenenoro, and when thenearest hippo got his negro in his mouth and started for the shore Pa climbed on his back and rode ashore in triumph, grabbing the husband of the sixty wives by the arm and pulling him on board the hippo, and saving his life, and right there in the mud, while the hippos were eating their breakfasts of cheap negroes, that husband told Pa he felt so under obligation to him that he could have his sixty wives in welcome, and he would go out in the jungle and corral another family.

Pa said he was much obliged but he must decline, as in his own country no man was allowed to have more than fifteen or twenty wives. But the terrible scandal Pa had brought upon the expedition was settled out of court, and Pa was reinstated in good standing in our expedition.

It takes a hippo quite a while to go to sleep after eating a negro, as you can imagine, they are so indigestible, and it was annoying to stand around in the mud andwait, but we finally got two specimens of the hippo into the cages, and we killed two more for food for the negroes, who like the flavor of hippo meat, after the hippos have been battered on negroes.

On the way back to camp we sighted a herd of elephants, and Pa said he would go out and surround a couple of them and drive them into camp. Mr. Hagenbach tried to reason with Pa against the suicidal act, in going alone into a herd of wild elephants, but Pa said since his experience with old Bolivar, the circus elephant, he felt that he had a mysterious power over elephants that was marvelous, and so poor Pa went out alone, promising to bring some elephants into camp.

Well, he made good, all right. We went on to camp and got our hippos put to bed, and fed the lions and tigers, and were just sitting down to our evening meal, when there was a roaring sound off where Pa had surrounded the elephants; the air was fullof dust, and the ground trembled, and we could see the whole herd of about forty wild elephants charging on our camp, bellowing and making a regular bedlam.

When the herd got pretty near us, we all climbed trees, except the negro husband and his wives, and they took to the jungle.

Say, those animals did not do a thing to our camp. They rushed over the tents, laid down and rolled over on our supper, which was spread out on the ground, tipped over the cages containing the animals we had captured, found the gasoline barrel and filled their trunks with gasoline and squirted it all over the place, and rolled the gasoline on the fire, and away the elephants went with gasoline fire pouring out of their trunks, into the woods, bellowing, and when the dust and smoke cleared away, and we climbed down out of the trees and righted up the cages, here came Pa astride a zebra, playing on a mouth organ, “There’ll Bea Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” which had frightened the elephants into astampede.

Pa, Astride of a Zebra, Had Frightened the Elephants Into a Stampede by Playing “A Hot Time” on a Mouth Organ.

Mr. Hagenbach stopped Pa’s zebra, and Pa said, “Didn’t you catch any of ’em? I steered ’em right to camp, and thought you fellows would head ’em off, and catch a few.”

I never saw Mr. Hagenbach mad before. He looked at Pa as though he could eat him alive, and said, “Well, old man, you have raised hell on your watch, sure enough.” And then Pa complained because supper was not ready. Gee, but Pa is getting more gall all the time.

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