CHAPTER XXII.
Pa and the Boy Have a Series of Ups and Downs—Pa Plays Poker with the Michigan Man and Loses All His Money—Pa Puts Up His Airship and Loses—Pa and the Boy Start for Hamburg—The Boy Makes a King’s Crown Out of Tin—The Boy Tells How They Escaped from the Negro Tribes in Africa.
It seems to be just one series of ups and downs with Pa and I. One day we are kings and things, and the next day we are just things and not kings, or ninespots, or anything in the deck, except it’s Jacks.
That short stay at the ranch of the Michigan man in Africa, which seemed like being set down from hades in Darkest Africa to Heaven in America, terminated just as everything else does with us.
After we had enjoyed the morning with the wild animals on the race track, Pa andthe Michigan man set into a game of draw poker with some other sharps and the cowboy, and they must have stacked the cards on Pa and the cowboy, for before night they had got all Pa’s money away, and the cowboy was burst, too, and in the evening Pa put the airship up against the creamery and a drove of Jerseys, and Pa lost the airship, and then Pa gave checks on a bank in the River Nile, and lost all the checks, and about a pint of the diamonds, and when we went to bed the Michigan man said he hated to part with us, but if we must go he would send us over to Lake Victoria Nigouza, where we could take a steamer for Hamburg.
We didn’t sleep much that night, and the next morning the auto was at the door, and we took what little stuff Pa had not lost playing poker, and crossed the country to the lake, at a town where Pa sold some of his uncut diamonds for money enough to pay for our passage to Hamburg, and we goton board the vessel and got into our state rooms.
Just before we were ready to start an officer came on board looking for two white men who had been giving checks that were no good, and for selling diamonds that would not wash.
I heard about it, and there was such a crowd that the vesselmen did not remember Pa and the cowboy, but they said the officers could search the vessel if they wanted to.
I went to the state room and told Pa and he turned pale, and trembled like a leaf, and the brave cowboy had a fit. They were scared at the prospect of being taken ashore and put in an English jail, and Pa sweat so he looked like a hippopotamus sweating blood.
Pa said they were up a stump, and asked me if I could think of anything to help them out. I told Pa the only thing for us to do was to take a burned cork and black up, andpretend that Pa was an African king, on the way to England to have a conference with King Edward about tribal affairs.
Gee, but Pa and the cowboy bit like a bass and I got a champagne cork and burned it over the lamp and went to work bleaching us all up, and in half an hour we were three of the blackest niggers that ever emigrated from Africa. I even blacked the place on Pa’s leg where the lion had chewed a hole through his pants.
We looked at ourselves in the mirror, and inspected each other, and couldn’t find a white spot, and then I told Pa what to do when the officers of the law came.
He was to be seated in state, on a high chair, looking like a nigger king, and the cowboy and I were to get down on our knees before him and kowtow.
I got a crown made out of a tin basin, and a feather duster for a plume, and fixed Pa up so that any tribe would have gone wild over him.
Just as we got Pa fixed up, and we had all stopped laughing, there was a knock at the door of the state room, and I opened it, and two semi-Englishmen came in looking for Pa and the cowboy, but when I waved my hand and said, “Behold the King of Natabeland,” and the cowboy bit the duster and saluted Pa, and Pa looked savage and said in broken negro, “What, ho! varlets,” the officers said, “Beg pardon, don’t you know, your ’ighness,” and they backed out of the door, making salaams, and soon disappeared. Gee, it was a close call.
Soon after the engine began to turn the screw of the propeller, and when we looked out of the porthole the vessel was going towards the ocean, and when I told Pa he got down off his throne and danced a jig and hugged the cowboy, and we were having a jollification when there was another rap at the door, and Pa jumped up on the throne and put on his tin basin crown, and I opened the door, and the steward of the vessel camein with his hat in his hands, and asked Pa what he would have for supper. Pa said he didn’t care what he had if he only got it quick, and the steward said mostly when they were carrying African kings to England they served the meals in the state rooms, as the kings did not care to sit at the same table with the common herd, and Pa said that suited him all right, and the steward added that the passengers also complained of the manners of the African kings, and the smell that they emitted in the cabin.
There Was a Knock at the Door of the Stateroom.
There Was a Knock at the Door of the Stateroom.
There Was a Knock at the Door of the Stateroom.
Pa was going to get hot at that remark, but I was afraid the burnt cork would rub off, so I said His Highness would be served in his state room, and to bring the best the ship offered, and bring it quick if he didn’t want trouble aboard, and he bowed low and went out, and pretty soon the waiters began to bring in oysters and soup and turkey and boiled pheasants, and ice cream, and we kings and things didn’t do a thing to the food, and when the dishes were taken awayempty, and the wine had been drank, and the cigars brought in, King Pa got down from his throne and just yelled, and he said to the cowboy, “Say, Alkali Ike, wouldn’t this skin you?” and Ike said he guessed it would when they found out what frauds we were, and after awhile we turned in and slept just like we were at home.
For several days they fed us like they were fattening us for a sausage factory, and the ocean was blue and calm, and we were let out on deck near our state room for exercise, and I kept burning cork and keeping us all blacked up nice, and Pa would repeat African words that he had picked up, mixed with English words, and everybody kept their distance and thought we were the real nigger thing.
Well, everything was going along beautifully, and we thought we had never struck such a snap in all our lives, until about the fifth day.
We had eaten so much that our appetiteshad gone, and Pa and the cowboy took to drinking more and more, and one night it began to blow, and the vessel was part of the time on one end and then on the other, and then rolling from side to side, so that Pa couldn’t sit on his throne without sideboards, and towards morning we all got seasick and fell all over the state room, and Pa had a pain under his belt that doubled him up like a jackknife, and he yelled for a doctor. I told him never to send for a doctor until the boat tied up at a dock, because it was dangerous, but Pa said he had to have a doctor, and the cowboy had drank a bottle of Scotch whiskey and had laid down under a bunk, and he was no good, so I rang for the ship’s doctor, but I told Pa he must keep the parts of his body that were not black covered up, or the doctor would find out he was a white man, and then it would be all off in the nigger king masquerade.
Pretty soon the ship’s doctor came with a female trained nurse, and Pa was a pitifulsight when he saw them. The doctor felt of Pa’s pulse, and asked him where the pain was, and Pa, like a darn fool, put his hand on his stomach, and before Pa could stop it the doctor had opened Pa’s shirt, and was feeling where the appendix gets in its work.
Pretty Soon the Ship’s Doctor Came with a Nurse.
Pretty Soon the Ship’s Doctor Came with a Nurse.
Pretty Soon the Ship’s Doctor Came with a Nurse.
It was a little dark, but the doctor said, “You old seney ambion, you have got about the worst case of appendicitis that was ever pulled off on this vessel. Boy, bring me that lantern.”
I hated to do it, because I knew Pa would be discovered, and I delayed bringing the lantern as long as I could, but, turning the wick down, but the doctor snatched a match so he could see Pa’s stomach, and then he said, “Say, old skate, you are no more nigger king than I am; you are a white man blacked up;” and the trained nurse said, “The ’ell you say,” and then I got the lantern and they looked at Pa’s white skin, and the doctor asked Pa what he had to say for himself, and Pa admittedthat he was a white man, but said he had many of the estimable qualities of a nigger, but that he was traveling incog, to throw his enemies off the track, and then Pa fainted away from the pain, and the cowboy got sober enough to wake up and take notice, and we told the doctor who we were, and how we had escaped from negro tribes and draw poker sharps and officers of the law, and the cowboy fell in love at first sight with the trained nurse, and then Pa came to, with the aid of a bucket of water and some whiskey, and the storm went down, and the doctor said Pa would have to have an operation performed to remove his appendix, and Pa kicked about it, but they took him to the ship’s hospital, with the cowboy for an assistant nurse, and I was left alone in our state room, the only king there was left, and when I washed off my burnt cork I was so white and pale that they gave me medicine, and the trained nurse held me on her lap and sang English songsto me, with all the h’s left out, and every day she told me how they removed Pa’s appendix, and it was swollen up bigger than a weiner sausage, but that he would live all right, and when he got well enough the captain would put Pa in irons for passing himself off for a nigger king, and that he would probably be transported for life, if he couldn’t raise the price of a ransom. And there you are.