Chapter 3

"How did you settle it--did he get damages?" asked the Stranger.

"Damages!" exclaimed the Press Agent as he wiped the foam from his moustache. "Why, Merritt came in, and when he heard the guy's kick he lit right into him.

"'Blame your skin!' he yelled. 'I've a good mind to have you arrested for stealing the pictures from my art gallery. I have a claim on 'em, for I paid for the liquor to keep a sailor drunk for six weeks while he was doing that job.' The Rube got onto the fact that she was valuable, so they adjourned to a saloon to talk it over."

"With what result?" asked the Proprietor, as he rose from the table.

"Well, Merritt got her back on the platform, the Rube sold his farm, and within six weeks he was wearing more yellow diamonds and throwing a bigger chest than the husband of a grand opera prima donna."

FEEDING THE SERPENTS AND A GRAND TRANSFORMATION

FEEDING THE SERPENTS AND A GRAND TRANSFORMATION

The animals had received their evening meal when the Proprietor came from the Arena and joined the Stranger and the Press Agent at the table outside.

"I can never understand the interest people take in seeing the carnivorous animals fed; it is no more than giving a bone to a dog," he said, as he took his seat. "And yet it is one of the best drawing features of the show, and the same people remain night after night to see the meat poked into the cages. If it were not for the prohibition of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals I could give a feeding exhibition which would be novel and interesting, for comparatively few people have ever seen a snake eat.

"It is because a snake will not eat unless it kills its own food," he continued in answer to a question from the Stranger. "Snakes are more particular feeders than any other animals, and they will not touch anything which is not alive when it is brought to them. This is the night for feeding them, and if you care to remain until the crowd has gone you can see how it is done. Long as I have been in the business, I learn something new every day, and I never saw a cobra fed artificially until last week, when Brandu, my Hindoo snake charmer, received one direct from India. It seems that they are cannibal snakes and live upon their own kind in India, but that would be too expensive a diet here, and he forces feed down its throat."

The thousands of incandescent lights on the Dreamland tower went out--the signal that the barkers might cease from barking and the spielers spiel no more--until the morrow brought its fresh crowd of amusement seekers, and the Proprietor led the way into the Arena. Brandu and his two native assistants were carrying the boxes which contained the snakes into the big exhibition cage, and, when the three men joined them, the weirdness of the surroundings made a profound impression upon the Stranger. All of the lights in the Arena were extinguished, with the exception of the small cluster directly over their heads, and pairs of luminous spots from the great semicircle of cages at the outer edge of the building reminded him that the human beings in the cage were not the only interested spectators of the proceedings.

The assistants carefully removed the great boas and pythons from the boxes, laying them on the floor, where they crawled lazily about, their delicate forked tongues vibrating like streaks of red flame, while Brandu removed a slat from a crate of rabbits and put a half-dozen of them on the floor. The little animals had no instinctive fear of the serpents, for they hopped about among them and over their wriggling bodies unconcernedly, but the snakes were hungry after a fast of two weeks and they wasted no time in getting to the business before them. The proceeding was the same in each case. A serpent would crawl up to the rabbit and place its nose, at which the little furry beast would sniff curiously, close to that of its prospective supper. The red forked tongue would pass rapidly over its face and the rabbit made no attempt to move. Whether it was the effect of some anæsthetic quality in the breath of the snake or the traditional charm of the serpent, it was hard to say, but the rabbit made no move to escape. Slowly but surely it yielded to the fascination of the snake, the large transparent ears dropped to the side of the head and the body muscles relaxed until the tickling of the serpent's tongue caused no reflex movement of the paws.

The snake then carefully withdrew its head until the slim neck was in the form of a letter S, and when it again straightened out it was with the force of a released steel spring and the aim of the flat head was unerring. The stroke was so rapid that it was difficult for the eye to follow and the rabbit never knew what happened, for its body made a quick circle in the air and in less than a second all that was to be seen was one small paw protruding from the coiled body which had brought it a quick and merciful death. The jaws of the serpent have seized it by the snout and thrown it back into its coils and the first pressure kills it, although the ever tightening embrace continues until the bones are crushed within the unbroken skin, so that it can be easily swallowed.

It is not swallowing in the ordinary sense of the word, for the snakes pull themselves over the rabbits as a glove is pulled over the finger, and the progress to the stomach can be watched through the length of the snake's neck. The snakes which were too small to manage a rabbit were fed on white rats and mice, but the process was the same in each case, except that the Hindoos held the rodents by their tails until the snakes had hypnotized them.

"I suppose that this seems cruel to people because the rabbits are such harmless little beasts," said the Proprietor as the last bit of fur disappeared. "To my mind it is not half so cruel as hunting hares with guns and dogs, for death from the snake's blow is as quick and painless as that from a bullet, and there are no maimed and wounded animals to drag themselves away to lingering deaths in hiding. But now I will show you something which has never been known in this country."

One of the natives brought out a curiously woven circular basket which he handled with great care, and setting it in the middle of the cage retired to a respectful distance. Brandu crouched on the floor beside it, and, although the performance was not accompanied by the weird Oriental music which signaled the public appearances of the snake charmer, the tense expression of his face and the uncanniness of the surroundings made it sufficiently impressive, for he was about to handle the cobra de capello, the most venomous snake in all the great collection. He wasted no time in the pantomime and incantation of the ring performance, but quickly threw off the cover, and when the hooded head arose swaying above the edge of the basket, he started a low whistling and passed his slim brown hands with lightning rapidity above it. He was absolutely fearless, but the task before him demanded the concentration of all his thoughts and he seemed unconscious of the startling interruption of a fight between two of the lions, and the shouts and pistol-shots of the keepers who separated them.

He never removed his gaze from the head of the serpent and his hands moved so rapidly that they were almost invisible until, quicker than a snake could strike, one of them darted down and caught the slim neck behind the distended hood. He gave a sharp exclamation of triumph and sprang to his feet, the cobra coiling its body about his bare brown arm and giving every indication of rage.

"I am always glad when that part of the performance is over," said the Proprietor with a sigh of relief. "Of course, it is all in the day's work with Brandu and he has done it thousands of times, but some day he will be a fraction of a second too slow and then--well, I shall have to get another snake charmer. Watch him now and you will see something which only the men of his caste can do."

Brandu's white teeth glistened as he smiled at the Proprietor and pointed first to his own eyes and then to those of the serpent. He brought the head of the cobra close to his face, his expression became fixed and stern and the pupils of his widely opened eyes, which had been dilated until the iris was but a narrow rim, contracted to the size of pin heads. The cobra gazed at him fixedly and the tense body slowly uncoiled from his arm and hung limp and motionless, and Brandu laid it on the floor as lifeless and inert as a piece of rope. One of his assistants handed him a glass containing a couple of raw eggs and, handling it as carelessly as if it were a harmless garter snake, he picked up the cobra and forced a tube of polished bamboo between its jaws. When he had poured the eggs through the tube he withdrew it and carefully replaced the snake in the basket, still apparently lifeless; but bending over he blew sharply into its face and the cobra was instantly reanimated into five feet of viciousness. Its head reared up above the edge, the spectacled hood distended in anger, but Brandu quickly clapped on the cover and the snake feeding was finished for two weeks.

"That is a great performance of Brandu's," said the Press Agent, "but it profits us nothing because the best part of it cannot be shown to the public. I never see a snake fed without thinking of something which happened when I was running a side show with the Greatest Show on Earth.

"You know that the dime museum business was run to death while the craze lasted in this country, and freaks got so common that you couldn't throw a stone in the streets of any large city without hitting one of 'em. When the fickle public tired of giving up its dimes to see 'em, a guy named Merritt and myself had a choice collection on hand, and we went on the road with the big show for the summer, thinking perhaps our business would pick up in the fall. Our two great attractions were the biggest boa-constrictor in captivity, which we called 'Jointless Jake,' and the heaviest fat man in the world. That snake was about two hundred feet long, and while the fat man wasn't much on length, he held the record for belt measurement. Nine hundred and twenty-seven pounds he weighed, as we demonstrated on our own scales at every performance. Their feed bill was quite an item, as the snake took a half-dozen sheep every two weeks and the fat man, who was billed as 'Signor Adipose Avoirdupois'--Merritt invented that--needed about a side of beef every day.

"Freaks are a jealous lot and as hard to manage as rival prima donnas, and these two monstrosities came to hate each other like poison. They were in different lines, but you may have noticed that the side show 'professor' uses up most of the superlatives in the English language when he gives his lecture, and each of 'em seemed afraid that the other would get some of his share of the dictionary. Adipose used to look at Jake's coiled body as if he would like to sit on it and flatten it out, and the snake would return the glance with a naughty little twinkle in its eye, as if he was estimating how much it would have to stretch its skin to accommodate A. A. in its interior, until it made Merritt anxious about 'em.

"'That blame fat fool will waste away and spoil his shape, if he don't stop worrying,' he says, and he cuts a lot of his talk out of the description of the snake and uses the words on Adipose. Maybe you think snakes are stupid, but they aren't, and the boa got the hump and refused to uncoil himself to show his length unless he got his full share of the spiel. It cheered Avoirdupois up, though, and when we moved to the next town he stood around to gloat over Jake when he was being moved from the traveling box to the exhibition cage. The snake hadn't been fed for ten days and he was good and lively as well as being out of temper, so when he caught sight of the Signor he scattered the boys with one flip of his tail and went for him.

"I've heard of bear hugs, but I never saw such a squeezing as that boa gave poor Adipose. It was a long way around him, but the snake made about a dozen wraps and all we could see of the fat man was a pair of feet sticking out at one end of the coil and his face, which looked like a purple harvest moon, projecting from the other. Jake reaches out and gets hold of a tent peg with his tail, which gives him a purchase, and then he tightens up for fair and Adipose lets out a holler you could hear a mile.

"Of course, we got busy with crowbars and jackscrews and tried to pry Jake off, but there was nothing doing and the harder we pried the closer he cinched up on Adipose. Merritt usually had a suggestion to make, so I looked at him and he was lost in thought, but in a minute he brightens up and calls for a rope.

"'We can't pry the blame snake away from the man,' says he, as he tied the rope around the Signor's feet, 'so we'll try to pull the man away from the snake.' All hands fell to and pulled to beat four of a kind, but Jake just tightened up a bit and grinned and Adipose let out another holler.

"'You need a traction engine on that rope,' says I when they gave it up as a bad job, and Merritt, who was looking a little discouraged, gave a whoop.

"'Bring an elephant,' he yelled, and when one of the boys started off on a run for the menagerie, he called after him to 'make that order two elephants.' The Hathis came lumbering over, and Merritt tied the rope around the shoulders of one and put another rope around Jake's neck and the shoulders of the other elephant.

"'Now pull, blame you!' says he, heading 'em in different directions and giving one of 'em a kick, and they put their shoulders against the ropes. It was a mighty interesting performance to every one but Adipose, who didn't seem to enjoy it at all, judging from the yells he let out. Jake was having the time of his life, and the harder the elephants pulled the tighter he squeezed the Signor, and when he felt that they were getting the better of him he made a supreme effort which kinked up every muscle in his body. But there was no holding on against those brutes, and pretty soon the fat man commenced to slip out from the coils, feet first. It was a queer thing to watch and his legs stretched so that I thought his knees would never come into sight. His legs had been about the size of barrels when the snake grabbed him, but between the stretching and the squeezing they were now three times as long and about as large as broomsticks. He weighed as much as ever when the elephants finally got him out, but the flesh was distributed differently and instead of being six feet tall and twelve feet around, he was twelve feet long and built in proportion. The snake was up against it, too, for he had cramped himself so with that last squeeze that he couldn't straighten out the kinks, and he kept in the same shape as when he was wrapped around the Signor. We tried to straighten him out, but it was no use; he just stayed coiled up like a spring and the boys rolled him around as if he were a barrel.

"Merritt had kept cheerful as long as there was anything to be done, but tears came to his eyes when he looked at Adipose. The Signor was standing up, gazing at his feet, which he hadn't seen before in twenty years, and Merritt looked up at him and freed his mind.

"'You're a blame fine figure of a fat man, aren't you, now?' says he. 'Just on account of your confounded professional jealousy we lose our two star attractions, for that blamed snake is so kinked up that he isn't good for anything except to cut up into barrel hoops.'

"The Signor was ashamed of himself and hadn't a word to say, so he just kept quiet and tried to get used to his new shape and taking a bird's-eye view of things. Merritt and I were feeling pretty blue when along comes Tody Hamilton, the circus press agent, and as soon as he saw what had happened he made a run for a trolley car.

"'Don't let 'em get away!' he yelled back over his shoulder. 'This is the biggest scoop on record and I'm off for the printing-office.'

"'It'll make a good newspaper story, all right; but where do we come in on it?' says Merritt, looking mournfully at Adipose.

"Well, a couple of hours later I had to go into the city to order some new togs for the Signor, who looked as if he were dressed in a particularly baggy bathing suit since he had been stretched out, and the first thing I saw was a procession of sandwich men marching down the street. The ink wasn't dry on the posters, but Tody had been busy, and there in flaming red letters was the announcement--

JUST ARRIVED AT THE BIG SHOW!

DON'T MISS SEEING THEM!!!

LENGTHY LOUIS, THE TALLEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE!!!

CIRCULAR SAM, THE MOST GIGANTIC HOOP SNAKE EVER CAPTURED!!!

THE LIONESS SKIRT DANCE AND THE INCONSIDERATE PYTHON

THE LIONESS SKIRT DANCE AND THE INCONSIDERATE PYTHON

The conventional skirt dance has long ceased to be a novelty on the vaudeville stage, but as it is performed by "La Belle Selica" in the Arena at Dreamland it holds the interest of that most exacting audience--a crowd of Coney Island pleasure seekers. It is not because Selica is pre-eminent among dancers, but on account of the unusual and dangerous stage setting; for she performs in the large exhibition cage, surrounded by a half dozen lionesses, each animal seated on a separate pedestal. Any one of the huge beasts could crush the dancer with a single blow of a massive paw, and the great jaws which snap viciously at her tiny feet as she kicks them before their faces are sufficiently powerful to crush the shin-bone of an ox.

She is apparently without fear of them, for she dances gracefully from one to the other, flicking them across their faces with the light switch which she carries for her only protection, and kicking over their heads and into their very mouths, always missing the answering snap of the jaws by the fraction of an inch, and acknowledging it with a smile as she whirls away to repeat the performance before another pedestal. The lionesses see the performance many times in the course of a season, but they never lose interest in it and they do not remove their eyes from Selica from the time she enters the cage until she drives them out before her. So long as she is on her feet and agile enough to escape the swift stroke of a paw or the snapping jaws, she is safe; for a lioness would not jump at her from a pedestal; but there is always the chance of a slip or a false step and then----!!!

It happened once, and caused a suspension of Selica's performance for two months during the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, for Grace, the largest lioness, was on her before she could recover herself; and it required the efforts of Bostock and all of his trainers to beat back the beasts who were maddened by the sight and smell of blood and to rescue the unconscious woman from the cage. They have never forgotten that moment of rebellion which was so nearly successful, and they are ever watchful for another opportunity to avenge the many cuts of the training whip which they received in the course of their schooling. But Selica is also watchful, and although Grace had latterly done nothing particularly out of the way, the wonderful sixth sense which experienced trainers always acquire warned her that the animal should be regarded with suspicion. The beast had become nervous; a little more sullen than usual when ordered to leave her den for the exhibition cage, and a trifle slow and rebellious when told to jump up on her allotted pedestal.

Constant association with the wild animals begets carelessness but Selica, with the scars of Grace's sharp claws still visible on her back and shoulders, was quick to notice the change and especially careful, before opening the door from the den to the runway, to look through the observation hole and make sure that the lioness was not crouched for a spring. Grace had been particularly sullen in the afternoon and she was growling ominously when Selica went to get her for the evening performance, but when the woman saw the three little furry balls which were huddled in a corner of the den she understood and forgave all. The cubs were no larger than St. Bernard puppies, but Grace apparently considered them worth fighting for; and Selica's dance was given that night with only five lionesses in the cage, and the Proprietor told the Stranger the reason for the empty pedestal.

"Wait until after the performance and I will take them out of the cage and show them to you," he said; and the Stranger, remembering a tradition to the effect that robbing a lioness of her cubs is a dangerous feat, looked forward with a great deal of interest to the after-piece.

"We can't trust the rearing of the cubs to Grace," said the Proprietor, as he stood in front of her cage after the audience had been dismissed. "The close proximity of the other animals in the Arena and the curiosity of the thousands of people who come here every day would make her so crazy that she would destroy them, so I must get them a foster mother. I have sent to New York for a bitch with pups, and in a couple of days I will show you a happy family." The cubs were in the center of the cage and Grace stood over them, snarling and looking with blazing eyes at the group in front of it; but Selica's voice from the runway and a rattling of the door at the back distracted her attention, and as she sprang at the door the Proprietor darted a hand between the bars and seized one of the cubs, drawing it safely out a half second before the enraged mother landed against the bars with a force which made them rattle.

The poor beast was almost frantic, but the same maneuver was twice repeated, and in spite of her fierce attacks on doors and bars the Proprietor, who had acquired through his lifetime association with the great cats as much of their quickness of movement as it is given to mere man to learn, removed the three cubs without receiving a scratch.

Poor helpless little creatures they were, and it was difficult to realize that they would soon grow into beasts as powerful as the ferocious Baltimore, the terror of trainers, who was answering Grace's lamentations with roars which fairly shook the building, from his cage on the other side of the Arena.