e got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing
the ladder up from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach
it, he turned on a raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was
dangling in the sky before he got his wits together and seen what a
foolish thing he was doing. Then he stopped her, but he had clean forgot
what to do next; so there we was, so high that the lions looked like
pups, and we was drifting off on the wind.

But Tom he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her
down, and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a
camp-meeting, and I judged he had lost HIS head, too; for he knowed I
was too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and
things?

But no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. He swooped down
to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over the
center, and sung out:

"Leggo, and drop!"

I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile
toward the bottom; and when I come up, he says:

"Now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck
back, then I'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard."

I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, because if he had started
off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a'
come along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till I got
tuckered out and fell.

And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and
trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a
misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying
to hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you
never see anything like it in the world. There must 'a' been fifty
of them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and
biting and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell
which was which, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got
done, some was dead and some was limping off crippled, and the rest
was setting around on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore
places and the others looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting
us to come down and have some fun, but which we didn't want any.

As for the clothes, they warn't any, any more. Every last rag of them
was inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don't
reckon, for there was considerable many brass b