Careers of Danger and Daring

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."

THE DYNAMITE WORKER