Chapter 2

JOE FILLS IN

For a moment Bill Watson looked as though he did not understand what Joe said to him.

"It's Ben--in the tank--something wrong," whispered Joe.

"I get you!" said Bill quickly. He dropped the big stick he was pretending to use as a bat, and hurried with Joe to the big glass tank. As yet no one else seemed to have noticed anything wrong with the "human fish." Other acts were going on around him, and the crowd, watching through the glass sides of the tank, appeared to take it all as a matter of course. Ben was still under water, but he was doing nothing save swimming about slowly--altogether too slowly, Joe thought, for it indicated that whatever ailed the "human fish" was increasing in intensity.

"What's the matter?" asked Jim Tracy of Joe, as the young acrobat and Bill hurried across the tent. "Why aren't you two going on with your acts?"

Jim Tracy was head ring-master and one of the owners of the circus.

"Ben's in some kind of a fit," answered Joe. "We've got to get him out of the tank."

"Whew! Great Scott!" exclaimed the ring-master in a low voice. "Can we do it without starting a panic?"

"We've got to," said Joe fiercely. "If the audience knows that he's nearly drowned----"

"They mustn't know," agreed Tracy. "Come on."

They fairly ran toward the glass tank. By now Ben had settled down on the bottom, an inert form. He had been unable to hold his breath under the water, and it was filling his lungs. Joe Strong thought quickly.

He might dive into the tank and pull Benny out, for Joe had more than once on a hot day cooled off in the water in which the "human fish" did his act. But if Joe did that now it would let the people know something was wrong.

"But we've _got_ to get Benny up!" Joe reasoned.

He saw, lying near the tank, one of the elephant goads--"ankus" is the Indian name for the instrument. It is shaped like a boat-hook, but is sharper.

Joe quickly caught this up. Jumping to the platform, on which the tank stood, Joe whispered to Bill Watson and Jim Tracy to stand as near him as possible.

"We can sort of screen our movements that way," he said.

Reaching the hook down into the water, Joe caught it in a portion of Benny's "fish" suit. It was an easy matter to raise the now almost drowned performer to the surface, and then lift him out into the arms of Joe, the ring-master and the clown.

"We'll have to carry him to the dressing tent and have a doctor," said Jim Tracy. "And we'll have to do it on the quiet. Get some of the clowns, Bill, and have them march in a body, carrying Benny between them. Make it look as if it was all a part of the show. Carry it off as well as you can. Though what in the world I'm going to do to explain why the tank act isn't finished, I don't know. But we've got to take care of Benny first. Is he alive yet?"

"Just about," answered Joe, making a hasty examination.

Bill Watson quickly summoned some of his fellow clowns, and on a stretcher which two of the eccentric men had been using in a funny act of their own, Benny was carried from the main tent. The clowns so surrounded him that not a glimpse did the audience have of the stretched-out, silent, green-clad figure.

"Pretend it's all a joke," whispered the ringmaster fiercely.

"Sure," muttered Bill Watson.

It was a pretty grim joke, and only the great necessity for not starting a panic in the crowd of sightseers would have induced any one to take part in it.

And while poor Ben is being carried where he can have medical attention, new readers will be told briefly something about Joe Strong as he figures in the previous books of this series.

The first volume is entitled "Joe Strong, the Boy Wizard; Or, The Mysteries of Magic Exposed." Joe, whose mother had been a circus rider under the name Madame Hortense, and whose father, a sleight-of-hand worker, was known as Professor Morretti, was, at the opening of the story, an orphan, living with Mr. and Mrs. Amos Blackford in the town of Bedford. Deacon Blackford had taken care of Joe since the boy was about five years old, and was, in a sense, his foster-father.

Joe inherited from his mother an ability to ride almost any kind of horse, and he had nerves that made him unafraid to do circus tricks at great heights. As a boy he had climbed the village church steeple, to the delight of his companions and the horror of his foster-parents.

One day "Professor Rosello" gave an exhibition of magic in Bedford, and new events in Joe's life dated from then. The young man saved the professor's life, and then, because of threatened punishment on the part of Deacon Blackford, Joe ran away from home, eventually joining Professor Rosello, who made him an assistant.

Joe Strong was then started on his career to become a magician, and he "made good," as they say in theatrical circles. He invented some startling tricks and was a great help to the professor. At one time Joe's foster-father made a serious charge against him, and our hero was on the verge of arrest.

The second volume of the series is called: "Joe Strong On the Trapeze; Or, The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer." In that book Joe is first met helping Professor Rosello do a "fire trick" on the stage. Something went wrong with the electrical current and the magician was in danger of being burned to death. Joe's quick work saved Professor Rosello, but the shock was so great that the magician had to give up his stage work. The professor offered to lease the show to Joe, but the young performer had received a very good offer from the Sampson Brothers' Circus to become a trapeze performer, and he accepted.

Joe had formed the acquaintance of a few of the circus folk some time before in a casual way, and he had shown what he could do on the flying rings and the trapeze, which resulted in his engagement.

Jim Tracy, the ring-master, took quite a fancy to Joe, and Benny Turton, who did the "human fish" act, was very fond of our hero. As for Joe, he was more than interested in Helen Morton. So much so, that when it came to a question of whether or not to stay with the circus Joe decided to remain, just because he thought he might be of service to the girl rider.

He had been of great assistance to her in helping recover money left to her by her grandfather, and which a rascally law clerk nearly secured for himself. Bill Watson, the veteran clown, was also much interested in Helen and her inheritance, and he mentioned, casually, that perhaps Joe might come into money. For Mrs. Strong, who, before her marriage, was Janet Willoughby, came of a wealthy English family that had cast her off when she married Professor Morretti. But though Joe had written to England he had, as yet, received no encouraging word as to any inheritance that might come to him through his mother.

Joe is now beginning his second season with the Sampson Brothers' Circus, and the opening performance was marked by the accident which happened to Benny Turton.

"Quick now, boys!" urged the ring-master, as he walked along with the clowns who were carrying the half-unconscious form of the water performer. "I don't believe the crowd knows anything about it."

And this seemed to be the case. There were so many other things going on in the circus, so much to attract the attention, that it is doubtful if any in the throng realized that anything out of the ordinary had taken place in the big, glass tank. They may have supposed that every time, after his dive, the "human fish" was carried out that way to get ready for his next act.

For there were other parts to Benny's act. The dive into the water was really only the beginning, and no wonder Jim Tracy was anxious as to what could be done to "fill them in."

For the feats of the "human fish" had been widely advertised, and were "billed big," as it is called, on the posters. If the crowd saw no more than had been given them--merely a high dive into a comparatively shallow tank--there would be grumbling.

But, for the time being, there were no murmurings as the crowd expected Benny to come back.

Into the dressing tent the limp form, clad in its scaly green suit, was tenderly carried.

"You got him out in good shape, Joe, with that elephant hook," said Bill Watson.

"Yes. It came in nicely," said Joe, his eyes fixed on the white face of his friend. What had happened to Benny? Would he live?

Tenderly the boy--for he was only a boy--was laid on one of the cots in the dressing tent. Word of the accident had quickly but quietly passed among the circus folk, and already a messenger was on his way to summon a physician. Meanwhile first aid was being administered, for circus people have to hold themselves ready to deal with all sorts of emergencies and accidents.

"I guess he'll pull through," remarked Bill Watson, when it was seen that Benny was breathing, though very faintly.

"It was a close call," remarked another clown.

"That's what it was," agreed Jim Tracy. "A good thing you saw him in time, Joe."

"It was just chance I did, though I sort of had an eye on him. He said he didn't feel well when he started out to-day."

The physician came in. A quick examination told him the boy would live.

"Though it was a close call," he said. "There's something the matter with him besides nearly having drowned."

"What is it?" asked the ring-master.

"I can't tell. I will have to make a more careful examination--and in a hospital."

"Hospital? Then he can't go on with his act now--I mean in half an hour or so?"

"Go on with his act! I should say _not_, my dear sir! Why, the boy is near death yet. I must give him heroic treatment. I will call an ambulance."

"All right, doc. You know best. But I don't know what I'm going to do," and Jim Tracy shook a puzzled head. "The crowd will expect the tank act--he didn't do more than start it. It's been advertised all over the country. I don't know where I can get some one to take his place. This sure is hard luck, though, of course, it isn't Ben's fault, and I want you to take the best care of him you can. But who in the world can I put in on the tank act?"

"Put me in," said Joe Strong in a quiet voice.

"You?" cried Jim Tracy.

"Yes," answered the young acrobat "I can fill in all right. Let me finish out Benny's tank act."