Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/474

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82
AT SEA WITH THE CIRCUS.

coaxed, or driven in the same way. Each must have, in some measure, a special treatment; and that they all have it shows what a wonderful organization the great circus is.

A visit to the wild animals.

Down in the forward hold of the ship, braced with stout stanchions to the iron beams above, and arranged in any way to preserve the economy of space, are the cages of the wild animals. The gloom is scarcely penetrated by the dimly shining lanterns, swinging here and there in the narrow ways. There is just room to pass beyond the reach of savage claws through the open front of one cage, by rubbing along the unopened back of another. Every lurch of the ship threatens to throw you up against the iron bars, through which you see faint outlines of a crouching or uneasily moving form, illuminated by a pair of round, unwinking orbs that seem to glow and burn as if of red molten metal. To slip here may mean a clawing that shreds the arm, or a stroke that smites a bone from its socket or crushes the skull. Yet, with that species of idiocy which seems to attack everybody on shipboard, I began to steady myself as I passed along, by holding on to the bars of a lion's cage. My blood stood still, though, when I caught sight of "Nellie," the lioness who has killed two keepers and maimed half a dozen men