Part 8 (1/2)
As Joe was making his way toward the place where he could see a crowd of men about some central object, he heard a voice calling to him from one of the windows of the sleeping car occupied by the women of the circus troupe.
”What has happened?” some one asked. ”Is it a wreck?”
”No, nothing as bad as that, I guess, Helen,” Joe replied, recognizing the tones of the pretty trick rider. ”Some of the animals seem to be out. I'm going to see.”
”Come back and tell me about it. I hope it isn't one of the cats.”
”So do I,” Joe said. ”But I don't believe it is. I'll let you know.”
Circus folk and animal men in general speak of lions, tigers and other beasts of the feline tribe as ”cats,” and elephants, camels, horses and their like are known in show parlance as ”hay animals,” because hay is their princ.i.p.al fodder.
Joe hurried on to the crowd gathered about one of the flat cars.
”Look out! He's loose again!” came the yell, and Joe saw the crowd part, and a big ungainly animal come charging through.
”It's the hippopotamus!” cried Joe. ”The big brute is loose!”
The big animal, the ”blood-sweating behemoth of Holy Writ,” as it is sometimes called on the circus bills, was out of his tank wagon, and seemed to enjoy his liberty.
”Look out there!” some one in the crowd yelled to Joe. ”If he stamps on you there won't be anything left of you.”
”I guess that'll be true enough,” thought Joe. For the hippopotamus weighed nearly two tons, being one of the largest specimens in captivity.
On came the big beast, now and then opening its huge mouth, as Joe could see in the light that was beginning to break. Some of the crowd of men came rus.h.i.+ng after the hippopotamus with ropes, but the animal moved faster than one would suppose a creature of his bulk could travel.
”Stop him! Stop him, somebody!” came a voice. ”If he gets on the track an engine may hit him!”
That, Joe knew, would be a serious loss. For the animal was valuable, having cost the Sampson Brothers four thousand dollars originally, and his value had increased. Joe remembered hearing that Jumbo, the big elephant, many years ago, had been struck by an engine and killed, his skeleton now being in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
”Get him! Get him!” begged the head animal man.
”I wish I could!” thought Joe.
As he moved to get out of the way of the beast the young acrobat stumbled over a coil of rope which had been used to let some of the heavy wagons down the gangplank off the flat cars.
”If I could only la.s.so him with the rope it might stop him,” thought Joe. ”But I don't know how to manage a la.s.so, even if I could tie a noose in this rope. And I don't see how one la.s.soes a hippo anyhow.
However, here goes! I'll do the best I can. Maybe I can tangle his feet up in the kinks of the rope so he'll fall.”
Joe caught up the rope, and, without trying to straighten out the coils, threw it at the big animal, which was opposite him, Joe having leaped to one side. And he did by accident what the circus men had for some time been trying to do by design. He threw coils of the rope about the short legs of the ”river horse” and down went the hippopotamus with a thud.
”That's the stuff! Good work!” cried the animal's keeper. ”Quick now, boys! Rope him!”
Before the beast could get up he was pounced upon by a crowd of the animal men and securely bound with ropes.
”Whew!” exclaimed the keeper, as he faced Joe in the now gray dawn of the morning, ”that was some work!”
”How did he get loose?” Joe asked.
”The bottom dropped out of his wagon. Must have been rotten. He dropped with it and started off on his own hook. He walked all over a lot of us while we were trying to corner him.”
”Walked on us! Say, he danced a jig on my stomach!” complained Bill Dudley, one of the animal men, as he came limping up. ”Have you got him safe?”