The stillness now would be absolute but for a very curious sound, which comes out of the gloom beyond the big cage of leopards and tigers. It is the elephant Topsy sleeping. There is no stranger sight in a menagerie than that of an elephant asleep. The huge legs are bent to right angles at the knees, the trunk is curled into the mouth, and the whole suggests a shapeless mound of mud or clay, or a half-inflated balloon. Head and tail are alike; the ears lie flat; the eyes are quite concealed in wrinkled flesh, but from somewhere within this seemingly dead mass comes a long, hissing sound, like the exhaust from a steam-pipe. This sound continues for several seconds and then stops, to be repeated after an interval of silence.
A ROYAL BENGAL TIGER.
So complete is the illusion of the sleeping elephant's not being alive at all, but only a mound of dead matter, that, abstractedly, I set the alarm-clock down upon the flat bone of the forehead. No sooner have I done so than I spring back startled, leaving the clock ticking on the elephant's head. There has been no noise or movement, no indication of displeasure, no effort to do me harm. But suddenly, in the middle of the huge, mud-colored mass there has appeared a round, red circle about two inches in diameter. The elephant has simply opened his eye. The eye does not roll, or move, or wink. It merely remains open on me for a few seconds, a round, staring circle, and then disappears as suddenly as it came.
Leaving Topsy, I resume my wanderings among the cages. The whole place is asleep, and I am seized with intense desire to awaken something. I take a long straw, and tickle Black Prince on his black nose. His eyes open instantly, and the heavy paw swings round like the working-beam of an engine, only more quickly, to crush the straw for its impertinence. I tickle him again, and again he strikes, with force enough to knock down a horse. As I continue, his blows grow quicker and heavier, and his big tusks snap at the troublesome straw. Finally, in desperation, he starts up, and, throwing back his magnificent head, looks at me out of his brown, wicked eyes, lifts his chin, curls down his lower lip a little, and bellows forth a low, plaintive sound, more like the mooing of a cow than the roar of a lion. Then, apparently ashamed of this uninspiring sound, he shakes his mane and roars in genuine lion fashion.
So the hours of the night pass, and at last, having seen everything and grown weary of experiments, I seat myself on a trunk near Black Prince's cage, and am soon buried in my meditations. The tips of the tigers' noses begin to change from red to green, and then back again; the leopards' tails are no longer straight, but end in snake-heads with forked tongues darting out. I overhear curious conversations among the lions, and presently men in blue shirts and pink drawers come marching past, each carrying an alarm-clock. Then a curious thing happens: with a sweep of her trunk, the elephant Topsy lifts Jocko, the monkey, out of his red box.
"You must unlock the cages," says Topsy.
"All right," says Jocko. And he does.
Then all the lions, tigers, leopards, boar-hounds, Tibet goats, bears, ponies, and wild boars join in the procession, while the alarm-clocks beat time. Black Prince walks first, and, presently wheeling the line toward me, lifts his fore paw and says: