“Shine” slung the lantern over his arm, took the pipe across his shoulder, and started down.
He was in the middle of the ladder when Doherty called out to him, from the roaring darkness of the ’tween deck: “Go on down below an’ atten’ to yer fire, now. If any o’ youse tries to come in on this deck, I’ll turn the whole damn circus loose.”
“Shine” did not reply. He swung in to the deck and held up his lantern. Two big gorillas were watching from separate cages on either side of him, their teeth shining under curled lips, glaring at the light. He put down his lantern and pointed the nozzle like a gun.
Doherty threatened, “Here goes!”
“Tell ’em to start the water,” “Shine” cried to Cripps who was behind him. He heard Doherty knocking the pin out of a cage door, and he backed into the ladder.
“Sick ’em,” Doherty yelled; and “Shine” knew, by the direction from which the voice came, that Doherty was safe on top of a cage.
Then, down the passageway between the cages—in the dim halo that lay outside the ring of light from the lantern—“Shine” saw a pair of flaming eyeballs approaching him. He clutched the empty nozzle. A black leopard crept up and crouched at the edge of the light, its tail beating on the deck. Behind it he saw another. A third sneaked in beside them.
“Start yer water!” he called huskily.
Doherty yelled, “Sick ’em!”
The leopards snarled. The nozzle shook in “Shine’s” hands. His jaw had stuck, open-mouthed. He could not keep his eyes focused, and he blinked desperately, going “blind” with fear. “Wa-a—”