“Very well,” replied the zebra. “I’ll tell you what a merry chase I gave my pursuers when they were trying to catch me. You see white with many, many black stripes in it is hard to see at a distance. It seems to fade into the background. That is why during the war they painted the sides of the ships black and white so as to camouflage them.”
“What does camouflage mean?” asked the giraffe.
“You ought to know,” replied the zebra, “as your coat is camouflaged, though not just like mine as it has round black and white dots. They make it just as hard to see as stripes like mine.”
“Is that so? I never knew that before. But I do know that it is almost impossible to shoot us when on the run, as our coats make it very difficult to judge the distance we are from the hunter. But I never knew it was due to our spots and color.”
“Well, as I was saying,” continued the zebra, “where I lived there is a kind of tall growth of vegetation with long leaves just the width of our stripes and the branches grow straight and tall above our heads. When there is any of that kind of vegetation around and hunters get after us, we make for it and we are seldom seen after we enter, for the waving leaves throw black shadows across us and unless a hunter runs directly into us he will pass within a few feet of us and never discover us.”
Just then the train gave a jerk that threw the zebra off its feet, bumped the giraffe’s head against the top of its cage and sent Billy’s head bang up against the end of his cage and Nannie’s short horns into his side.
“Plague take this old train anyway! Why can’t the engineer toot the whistle and give a fellow warning that he is going to start? Now we can’t hear the rest of your story until we stop again as the train makes too much noise.
“Good-by, you old frogs and katydids, I hope I never, never, never hear you peep again as long as I live!” said Billy.
CHAPTER XVI
THE ESCAPE FROM THE CIRCUS
