Part 22 (1/2)

”A great act!”

He told Joe as much when the boy fish came out to breathe, as Lizzie had also to do, for a seal has lungs, and not gills like a fish.

”It was a great act, Joe!” said the ring-master.

”It remains to be seen whether she'll do as nicely in public,” Joe replied.

CHAPTER XVIII

SAD NEWS

Joe spent as much time as he could spare before the afternoon performance in practising with Lizzie. The trained seal seemed to have taken naturally to the boy fish and was becoming quite friendly. She would let Joe put his arms around her as they both swam under water, and she made no attempts to bite. This was one thing Joe had feared, for he knew that a nip from the sharp teeth of the sea-lion would make a bad wound.

But Lizzie seemed content with the fish, and the number of them she could eat and the ease with which she bit them into two pieces when they were too large to take at one mouthful showed her appet.i.te as well as the strength of her jaws and the keenness of her teeth.

”Going to put on the new act this afternoon, Joe?” asked the ring-master at the conclusion of the practice.

”I think I'd better not,” was the answer. ”Something might go wrong, and it would queer me, I think. Wait a few days. I want to get her used to the tent, the crowds and the lights. You see, she has only worked in theatres up to the present time.”

”Well, maybe you're right,” agreed the ring-master.

So that afternoon Joe did his usual tank act, with the goldfish placed in the big gla.s.s box. Joe ate his bananas under water, and though he tried to equal his other record of four minutes and ten seconds he had to come up two seconds sooner than the day before.

”I guess I've been going it too hard practising with Lizzie,” he reflected. ”Then, too, I didn't have a motor-cycle ride. I must get out the machine.”

The trained seal was brought into the tent that evening before the night performance and allowed to climb up the steps to get a fish. The gasoline incandescent lights were set aglow, for Joe's object was to see if the strange surroundings at night would bother the seal any.

But Lizzie did not seem to mind. She flopped her way up the steps, ate the fish and plunged into the tank of water, from which the goldfish had again been taken.

”I'll have to think up some way of keeping them in when I work with Lizzie in the water,” mused Joe. ”They're too pretty to leave out of the act, but unless I put a muzzle on her I don't see how I can keep her from eating them. Well, I'll think of that later.”

Joe did not get in the tank with Lizzie for practice that night, as he wanted her to learn gradually. Then, too, he was rather tired, and he had his trapeze work to do in addition to his aquatic act.

That night Lizzie, by Joe's orders, was left in her crate in the big tent while the show went on. Joe's object was to let the seal hear the music and the various noises, to see the lights, and to grow accustomed to the general atmosphere of a night performance in the ”main top.”

”Then she'll understand what she has to go through with six days out of the week during the season,” said Joe.

But something funny happened at that night's performance. Joe was in the midst of his tank act, and was getting ready to come out, prior to going in for the endurance test, when he heard the now familiar:

”Hook! Hook! Ook!”

”Lizzie's loose!” he exclaimed, looking around from the platform on which he stood, inflating his lungs with air to get ready for the four-minute--and longer--under-water stay.

And there, flapping her way over the ground toward the steps that led to the tank platform, was the trained seal. She had gotten out of her crate--though how Joe did not know--and was coming to the place she remembered as her feeding station.

Joe had to act quickly. The tank contained the goldfish, and to let Lizzie in now would mean that some of the pretty fish would be eaten.

It would not do to have that happen in public.