Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 108, February 2, 1895

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 108, February 2, 1895, by Various, Edited by Sir F. C. (Francis Cowley) Burnand

(By Mr. Punch's own Short Story-teller.)
I.—THE PINK HIPPOPOTAMUS. (CONTINUED.)
On the opposite side of the room, with his brave old back against the wall, stood my dear father, his arms tightly bound to his sides, and a cummerbund tied firmly over that mouth which had never, save in moments of thoughtless, but pardonable anger, spoken any but words of kindness to his son. In front of him was couched a huge man-eating tiger—I recognised his hominivorous propensities at once by the peculiar striping of his left shoulder, an infallible sign to a sportsman's eye—licking his chops in joyous anticipation of the unresisting feast which Providence had thus thrown in his way. I could see the great red tongue darting out now on one side of his mouth, now on the other, while his immense tail lashed the floor in dazzling curves. This spectacle would have been sufficient to shake the nerves of an ordinarily courageous man—but this was not all. On one side of the gigantic cat lay coiled an immense python, of the deadliest kind, and on the other one of the tallest and most powerful elephants I have ever seen was squatting on its haunches, blinking at my poor father with its wicked little eyes. I knew at once what had happened. My father's only weakness was a fondness amounting to mania for conjuring tricks of all kinds. The latest mail had brought us some English papers containing descriptions of the Cabinet Trick of the Davenport Brothers, who were at that time (this may help to fix the date, a point on which I have never cared to trouble myself) astounding all London by their dexterity in untying themselves from ropes lashed securely round them. As soon as he had read the accounts my father determined that he would practise the trick, and for a week past he had spent hours in our little room with coils of rope wound round every part of his body in the effort, which had hitherto proved vain, to release himself. Every day the heroic old fellow, still panting from his intolerable exertions, had murmured I am all but undone, but never—if the expression may be pardoned—had he been so near his utter undoing as he was at this awful moment. Of course I knew what had happened. The dastardly Chamberlain, whose discomfiture I have already narrated, must have got wind of my father's daily practice, and, taking advantage of his state of bondage, must have introduced into our room its present horrible occupants. The room was not a large one, and the stairs leading to it were steep, and I have never yet been able to explain to myself satisfactorily by what masterpiece of diabolical ingenuity the scoundrel was able to carry out his stratagem.