"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.