Kitabı oku: «Careers of Danger and Daring», sayfa 16
IV
WE SEE MR. BOSTOCK MATCHED AGAINST A WILD LION AND HEAR ABOUT THE TIGER RAJAH
WHENEVER I made the round of cages with Mr. Bostock I was struck by the fierce behavior of a certain male lion with brown-and-yellow mane, – "Young Wallace," they called him, – who would set up a horrible snarling as soon as we came near, and rush at the bars as if to tear them down. And no matter how great the crowd, his wicked yellow eyes would always follow Bostock, and his deep, purring roar would continue and break into furious barks if the tamer approached the bars. Then his jaws would open and the red muzzle curl back from his tusks, and again and again he would strike the floor with blows that would crush a horse.
"Doesn't love me, does he?" said Bostock, one day.
"What's the matter with him?" I asked.
"Why, nothing; only he's a wild lion – never been tamed, you know; and I took him in the ring one day. He hasn't forgotten it – have you old boy? Hah!" Bostock stamped his foot suddenly, and Young Wallace crouched back, snarling still, a picture of hatred and fear.
"Yes," went on Bostock, "he's wild enough. You see, after the fire, I had to get animals from pretty much everywhere, and get 'em quick. Did some lively cabling, I can tell you; and pretty soon there were lions and tigers and leopards and – oh, everything from sacred bulls down to snakes, chasing across the ocean, and more than half of them had been loose in the jungle six months ago. It was a case of hustle, and we took what they sent us. Then we had fun breaking 'em in. Ask Madame Morelli if we didn't. She's in the hospital now from the claws of that fellow." He pointed to a sleepy-looking jaguar.
"Tell you how I came to take this wild lion into the ring. I had a press-agent who had been announcing out West what a wonder I was with wild beasts, and how I wasn't afraid of anything on legs, and so on. That was all very well while I was in Baltimore; but when I joined my other show after the fire, of course I had to live up to my reputation. And when they got up a traveling men's benefit out in Indianapolis and asked me to go into the ring with Young Wallace, why, there wasn't anything to do but go in. It wasn't quite so funny, though, as it seemed, for I might as well have taken a lion fresh from the wilds of Africa." Mr. Bostock smiled at the memory.
"Well, I did the thing, and got through all right. Young Wallace hasn't forgotten what happened to him. I got the best of him by a trick: had a little shelter cage placed inside the big arena cage, and at first I stood in the small one, and let the lion come at me. Oh, you'd better believe he came! I thought sure he'd jump clean over the thing and land on me; for there was no roof to my cage – only sides of wire netting. He didn't quite do it, though; and as soon as I saw he was getting rattled I stepped out quick and went at him hard with whip and club. And I drove him all over the ring, and the people went crazy, for he was the maddest lion you ever saw.
"That was all right as far as it went, but the people wanted more. They got to be out-and-out bloodthirsty there in Indianapolis. Wanted me to go in the ring with Rajah, that big tiger. See, over there! Come up, Rajah. Beauty, isn't he? Doesn't pay any special attention to me, does he? Nearly killed me, just the same. Look!" He lifted his cap and showed wide strips of plaster on his head.
"Point about Rajah was that he'd killed one of my keepers a couple of weeks before. Poor fellow got in his cage by mistake. And now these Indianapolis folks wanted to see me handle him. Between you and me, this keeper wasn't the first man Rajah had killed, and I didn't care much for the job. As for my wife – well, you can imagine how she felt when she heard I was going in with Rajah.
"On the morning of the performance I decided to have a rehearsal, and called on a few picked men to help me. I knew by the way he had killed his keeper that Rajah would go at my head if he attacked me at all, so I rigged up a mask of iron wire, and wore this strapped over my head like a little barrel. Then I drove him into the arena and began, while the others looked on anxiously. It's queer, sir, but that tiger went through his tricks as nice as you please, back and forth, up on his pedestal and down again, everything just as he used to do in the old days before he went bad. Never balked, never turned on me; just as good as gold.
"Soon as I was satisfied I drove him across the bridge and down the runway toward his den. I came about a dozen feet behind him, carrying a long wooden shield, as we generally do in a narrow space. Rajah reached his cage all right, and went in. You see, he couldn't go down the runway any farther, for the door opening outward barred the passage. Behind that door I had stationed a keeper, with orders to close it as soon as Rajah was inside; but Rajah went in so silently that the keeper didn't know it, the peep-holes in the door being too high for him to see very well. The result was that the cage door stood open for a few seconds after the tiger had gone in. It seems a little thing, but it nearly cost me my life; for when I came up Rajah's head was right back of the open door, and when I reached out my hand to close the door he sprang at me, and in a second had me down, with his teeth in my arm and his claws digging into my head through openings in the mask.
"Then you'd better believe there was a fight in that runway! The keepers rushed in; Bonavita rushed in. They shot at him with revolvers, they jabbed him with irons, they pounded at him with clubs; and one of the blows that Rajah dodged knocked me senseless. Well, they got me out finally. I guess the mask saved my life. But I didn't take Rajah into the ring that evening, and Rajah won't be seen in the ring any more. He's made trouble enough. Why, the things I could tell you about that tiger would fill a book."
Some of these things he did tell me, for I brought the talk back to Rajah whenever the chance offered. I well remember, for instance, the occasion when I heard how Rajah once got out of his cage and chased a quagga – one of those queer little animals that are half zebra and half mule. It was late at night, and we had entered the runway, Mr. Bostock and I, after the performance, for he wanted me to realize the perils of this narrow boarded lane that circles all the dens and leads the lions to the ring. It is indeed a terrifying place – a low, dimly lighted passage, curving constantly, so that you see ahead scarcely twenty feet, and are always turning a slow corner, always peering ahead uneasily and listening! What is that? A soft tread? The glow of greenish eyeballs? Who can tell when a bolt may slip or a board give way? So many things have happened in these runways! Of course a lion has no business to be out of his den, but – but suppose he is? Suppose you meet him – now – there!
Well, it was here that I heard the story. Bonavita, it appears, was standing on the bridge one morning when there arose a fearful racket in the runway, and, looking in, he saw the quagga tearing along toward him. He concluded that some one had unfastened the door, and was just preparing to check the animal, when around the curve came Rajah in full pursuit. Bonavita stepped back, drew his revolver, and, as the tiger rushed past, fired a blank cartridge, thinking thus to divert him from the quagga. But Rajah paid not the slightest heed, and in long bounds came out into the arena hard after the terrified quadruped, which was galloping now with the speed of despair. A keeper who was sweeping clambered up the iron sides and anxiously watched the race from the top. Bonavita, powerless to interfere, watched from the bridge.
Of all races ever run in a circus this was the most remarkable. It was a race for life, as the quagga knew and the tiger intended. Five times they circled the arena, Rajah gaining always, but never enough for a spring. In the sixth turn, however, he judged the distance right, and straightway a black-and-yellow body shot through the air in true aim at the prey. Whereupon the quagga did the only thing a quagga could do – let out both hind legs in one straight, tremendous kick; and they do say that a quagga can kick the eyes out of a fly. At any rate, in this case a pair of nervous little heels caught the descending tiger squarely under the lower jaw, and put him to sleep like a nice little lullaby. And that was the end of it. The quagga trotted back to its cage, Bonavita put up his revolver, the frightened sweeper climbed down from the bars, and Rajah was hauled back ignominiously to his den.
Here we have three instances showing the extreme importance of little things in a menagerie. A keeper opens door No. 13 instead of door No. 14, and is straightway killed. A screw is loose in a bolt fastening, and, presto! a tiger is at large. A watcher at a peep-hole looks away for a moment, and a life goes into jeopardy. It is always so; and I will let Mr. Bostock tell how a little thing gave Rajah his first longing to kill.
"It was several years ago," said he, "when I was running a wagon show in England. I remember we were about a mile and a half out of a certain town when this thing happened. For some reason Rajah had been transferred to a bear-wagon, and we ought to have examined it more carefully, for bears are the worst fellows in the world to damage a cage by ripping up the timbers; it seems as if nothing can resist their claws and teeth. And this particular cage was in such bad shape that Rajah managed to get out of it. I knew something must be wrong when I saw the big elephant-wagon that headed the procession go tearing away with its six horses on a dead run under the driver's lash. No wonder the driver was scared, for he had turned his head and seen the two draft-horses that followed him down on the ground, with Rajah tearing at one of them, and the other one dead.
"It wasn't a pretty sight when we got there, and it wasn't an easy job, either, capturing Rajah. I don't know what we should have done if it hadn't been for a long-haired fellow in the show called 'Mustang Ned,' who came up with a coil of rope and lassoed the tiger. Then we tangled him up in netting, and finally got him into one of the shifting-cages. But after that he was never the same tiger. You wouldn't think there was a time when Rajah used to ride around the tent on an elephant's back, with only a little black boy to guard him!"
"What, outside the iron ring?"
"Yes, sir, right among the women and children. He did that twice a day for over a year. Might be doing it yet if the black boy hadn't been so careful of his white trousers."
"His white trousers?"
"That's right. You see, this boy rode on the elephant, behind Rajah, and he wore long black boots and a fine white suit. Made quite a picture. Only he didn't like to rub his trousers against the tiger, for an animal's back is naturally oily; so he used to tuck his legs under a lion's skin that Rajah rode on, and wrap it around him like a carriage-robe.
"Well, one day as they were going around the nigger lost his balance and tumbled off the elephant, pulling the lion's skin with him, and of course that dragged Rajah along, too. The first thing we knew, there was a big tiger on the ground, and people running about and screaming. Pleasant, wasn't it?
"In another minute we'd have had a panic; but by good luck I was there, and caught Rajah quickly around the neck and held him until the others got a rope on him. Then we had a time getting him back on the elephant. First I tried to make him spring up from a high pedestal, but he wouldn't spring. Next I had them work a ladder under Rajah, so that he sat on it; and then, with two men at one end and me at the other, we lifted him slowly level with our shoulders, level with our heads, and just there the tiger gave a vicious growl, and the two men lowered their end. That made him work up toward my end, and in a second I had Rajah's face close to my face, and both my hands occupied with the ladder. I couldn't do a thing, and the only question was what he would do. He looked at me, looked at the elephant, and then struck out hard and quick, missing me only by a hair; in fact, he didn't miss me entirely, for one of his claws just reached the corner of my eye – see, I have the scar still. But he jumped on the elephant, and we kept the mastery that day. Still, it was bad business, and I saw we couldn't take such chances again. That was Rajah's last ride."
V
WE SPEND A NIGHT AMONG WILD BEASTS AND SEE THE DANGEROUS LION BLACK PRINCE
THE general opinion among wild-beast tamers is that the tiger is more to be feared than the lion. The one will kill a man as easily as the other, but the lion gives fair warning of his murderous intention by rushing at his victim with a roar, whereas the tiger, true representative of the cat tribe, sneaks up with semblance of affectionate purr, only to set his fangs suddenly into the very life of his victim. The lion has somewhat greater muscular power than the tiger, but the latter has greater quickness.
The tamer Philadelphia told me once that he had seen a lion fasten his fangs in the shoulder of a dead horse and drag the carcass, weighing perhaps a thousand pounds, a distance of twenty feet. If a lion and a strong horse were to pull in opposite directions, the horse would drag the lion backward with comparative ease; but if the lion were hitched behind the horse, facing in the same direction, and were allowed to exert his strength in backing, he could easily pull the horse down upon his haunches, so much greater is his strength when exerted backward from the hind legs than in forward pulling.
A lion springing through the air from a distance of six feet would knock down a horse or bullock with a single blow of his forearm, backed by the momentum of his three hundred pounds' weight, and a full-grown lion in the jungles will jump twenty-five or thirty feet on the level from a running start. In captivity the same lion would clear a distance about half as great. A lion can jump over a fence eight or ten feet high, but not at a bound. He catches first with his forelegs, and drags his body after him. Tigers will jump a trifle higher than lions. But of all wild animals, the leopards are the greatest jumpers, being able to hurl their lithe and beautiful bodies, curled up almost into a ball, to extraordinary heights. They bound with ease, for instance, from the floor of the cage so as to touch a ceiling twelve feet high.
For a short distance a lion or a tiger will outrun a man, and can equal the speed of a fast horse, but they lose their wind at the end of half a mile at the most. They have little endurance, and are remarkably weak in lung power. Their strength is the kind which is capable of a terrific effort for a short time. It would take six men, for instance, to hold a lion down in his first struggles, even after his legs were tied.
One day Philadelphia, wishing to test the affection popularly supposed to exist between a lion and a mouse, put a mouse in the cage of a full-grown Nubian lion. The lion saw the mouse before it was fairly through the bars, and was after him instantly. Away went the little fellow, scurrying across the floor and squealing in fright. When he had gone about ten feet, the lion sprang, lighting a little in front of him. The mouse turned, and the lion sprang again. This was repeated several times, the mouse traversing a shorter distance after each spring of the lion. It was demonstrated that a lion is too quick for a mouse, at least in a large cage.
Finally the mouse stood still, trembling, while the lion studied it with interest. Presently he shot out his big paw, and brought it down directly on the mouse, but so gently that the little fellow was not injured in the least, though held fast between the claws. Then the lion played with him in the most extraordinary way, now lifting his paw and letting the mouse run a few inches, now stopping him as before. Suddenly the mouse changed his tactics, and, instead of running when the lion lifted his paw, sprang into the air straight at the lion's head. The lion, terrified, gave a great leap back, striking the bars with all his weight, and shaking the whole floor. Then he opened his great jaws and roared and roared again, while the little mouse, still squealing, made his escape. Of the two, the lion was the more frightened.
Speaking of Philadelphia, I used to wonder, as I watched him manage Black Prince on horseback, whether the lion was really in earnest as he struck and roared with such apparent viciousness, or whether he had simply been trained to play a part. Certainly the lion looked as if his one desire was to kill the little man who teased him so with rod and whip, smiling all the time under his yellow mustache.
One night Black Prince sprang ten feet through the air straight at Philadelphia, who saved his life by dodging, but did not escape the sweep of the lion's forearm. No one knew that, however, for the tamer showed no sign of injury, but brought his heavy whip down with a stinging cut over the lion's head, and went through the "act," holding a handkerchief to his face now and then, but smiling as before. When he left the ring, it was found that one of the lion's claws had laid his cheek open almost from eye to lip.
"He meant to kill me that trip," said Philadelphia, as they bound up his face.
"We will never show that lion again," declared the manager, much excited.
"Oh, yes, we will!" answered the wounded tamer. "I will make him work to-morrow as usual." And he did, teasing and prodding him that day as never before, as if daring him to do his worst.
The climax was reached one night in January, when Black Prince came within an ace of killing this daring tamer, and certainly would have done so had not his attention been diverted just at the critical moment by the horse he was riding. He paused in the very act of springing, as if undecided whether to destroy the man or the horse, and that pause put the tamer on his guard, while the watchful grooms rushed in through the iron gates and drove Black Prince from the ring.
Speaking to me afterward of that night, Philadelphia said: "I knew the critical moment had come, and that it would not do to push matters any farther. If I had made Black Prince do his jump when he balked and turned on me, he would have sprung at my throat, caught me between his fore paws, and fastened his fangs in my neck or breast. It would have been impossible for ten men to have dragged him off, and I should have been killed there in the sight of the spectators, just as my nephew, Albert Krone, was killed in Germany some years ago by a Russian bear."
In conclusion, let me recall a night that I spent among the wild beasts of the famous Hagenbeck menagerie. That, by the way, is a thing worth doing if one values strange sensations.
It is two hours after midnight. The snow lies crisp under foot, the stars and electric lights shine quietly in the still night. Before me rises a big building, its walls pictured with springing lions and pyramids of tigers. As I enter, a long roar from within tells me that the animals are not all asleep. The roar, a lion's, comes three times with increasing volume, and at the fourth is answered by another of equal volume; then two lions roar together, the sounds coming quicker and quicker, with an increasing staccato that ends finally in hoarse barks.
Taking a little alarm-clock that the night watchman loans me, I go back among the cages, where I am to keep strange vigil. A small wooden door at the right takes me into an open space ranged with cages and wagons, the former containing some barking dogs. From here I pass into a circular shed, where are more wagons and dogs, and at the farther end by the wet, sticky-looking seals I reach a small door leading into a low passage, beyond which are the wild beasts.
I push aside a curtain covering the entrance against drafts, and see before me a picture never dreamed of by humdrum New-Yorkers sleeping within stone's throw. The cages, ranged in double row, form an alleyway, divided at intervals by gas-stoves, on which water is heating. In front of the big group of lions and tigers sleeps one of the grooms, stretched on a cot bed. He wears a pink shirt and blue drawers, and his bare feet are turned to the gas-stove, which burns night and day. Another groom sleeps farther on, beside the Tibet goats, and still another near the ponies, opposite the small cage of the lioness Mignon. They sleep so soundly that a riot would scarcely waken them; yet, by some subtle sense, they would be on the alert in an instant if anything were wrong in the cages.
Three animals rouse themselves as I step into the darkness which shrouds the big cage – the lion Yellow Prince is one of them – and as I approach the bars three pairs of burning eyes glare at me through the shadows. I venture to turn on the electric light and peer into the cage. Here are three leopards, the three royal Bengal tigers, and a full-grown lion, making no more noise between them than a sleeping child.
I return to the farther end of the shed, where the five-year-old lioness Helena, alone in her cage, is walking back and forth drowsily, as if on the point of dropping off for her night's rest. Indeed, she does this presently, turning on her side, and stretching her legs out perfectly straight, with no bend at the joints. It was Helena who, in a fit of nervous fright a year or two ago, sprang upon Betty Stuckart, the famous prize beauty, and nearly killed her. Since then she has lived in solitary confinement.
The stillness now would be absolute but for a very curious sound, which comes out of the gloom beyond the big cage of leopards and tigers. It is the elephant Topsy sleeping. There is no stranger sight in a menagerie than that of an elephant asleep. The huge legs are bent to right angles at the knees, the trunk is curled into the mouth, and the whole suggests a shapeless mound of mud or clay, or a half-inflated balloon. Head and tail are alike; the ears lie flat; the eyes are quite concealed in wrinkled flesh, but from somewhere within this seemingly dead mass comes a long, hissing sound, like the exhaust from a steam-pipe. This sound continues for several seconds and then stops, to be repeated after an interval of silence.
So complete is the illusion of the sleeping elephant's not being alive at all, but only a mound of dead matter, that, abstractedly, I set the alarm-clock down upon the flat bone of the forehead. No sooner have I done so than I spring back startled, leaving the clock ticking on the elephant's head. There has been no noise or movement, no indication of displeasure, no effort to do me harm. But suddenly, in the middle of the huge, mud-colored mass there has appeared a round, red circle about two inches in diameter. The elephant has simply opened his eye. The eye does not roll, or move, or wink. It merely remains open on me for a few seconds, a round, staring circle, and then disappears as suddenly as it came.
Leaving Topsy, I resume my wanderings among the cages. The whole place is asleep, and I am seized with intense desire to awaken something. I take a long straw, and tickle Black Prince on his black nose. His eyes open instantly, and the heavy paw swings round like the working-beam of an engine, only more quickly, to crush the straw for its impertinence. I tickle him again, and again he strikes, with force enough to knock down a horse. As I continue, his blows grow quicker and heavier, and his big tusks snap at the troublesome straw. Finally, in desperation, he starts up, and, throwing back his magnificent head, looks at me out of his brown, wicked eyes, lifts his chin, curls down his lower lip a little, and bellows forth a low, plaintive sound, more like the mooing of a cow than the roar of a lion. Then, apparently ashamed of this uninspiring sound, he shakes his mane and roars in genuine lion fashion.
So the hours of the night pass, and at last, having seen everything and grown weary of experiments, I seat myself on a trunk near Black Prince's cage, and am soon buried in my meditations. The tips of the tigers' noses begin to change from red to green, and then back again; the leopards' tails are no longer straight, but end in snake-heads with forked tongues darting out. I overhear curious conversations among the lions, and presently men in blue shirts and pink drawers come marching past, each carrying an alarm-clock. Then a curious thing happens: with a sweep of her trunk, the elephant Topsy lifts Jocko, the monkey, out of his red box.
"You must unlock the cages," says Topsy.
"All right," says Jocko. And he does.
Then all the lions, tigers, leopards, boar-hounds, Tibet goats, bears, ponies, and wild boars join in the procession, while the alarm-clocks beat time. Black Prince walks first, and, presently wheeling the line toward me, lifts his fore paw and says:
"Mein Herr, it is six o'clock."
