The hose stiffened; the nozzle kicked up. With a cry between a shout and a groan, he turned the shut-off valve and let loose a full stream that struck the deck in front of the leopards and scattered them as if it had been boiling water. He yelled, “Wh-rr-ah! Damn yuh! Cripps! Crippsey!”—and slashed the water into the huddled gorillas and stamped beside the lamp, bent double, like an Indian in a fire dance, whooping.
A terrific uproar broke loose among the animals. “Shine” tugged on the hose and dragged it in, drenching everything, cursing gloriously. “Come out o’ that!” he yelled. “Yuh sneak thief!”
Suddenly the electric lights were switched on from the engine room, and the place blazed up with incandescent lamps. The other Jiggers of the squad joined him, carrying a second line. He staggered ahead with his nozzle and turned the corner of a cage to see Doherty flinging open a barred door to let loose a Barbary lion. As it jumped down, “Shine” caught it behind with the water; and the powerful stream turned it over, rolling on the deck. It scampered off with its tail between its legs, like a wet pup.
“Wah!” he screamed, and took Doherty through the empty monkey cage with a split spray that soaked him.
Doherty ducked and ran. “There he goes,” “Shine” shouted. “Keep ’m off the ladder.”
That deck of the fifth hold was a room about forty feet wide and thirty feet long; but the hatch in the center of it was at least twelve feet square, so that the deck was little more than a gallery, as deep as a stall, running around the open hatchway. As “Shine” drove Doherty and the animals ahead, they had to circle around the hatch to approach the ladder from the other side; and there Moore and the fourth man had already turned the hose on some of the frightened leopards—of which Doherty had released five—and driven them back on him. And Doherty, finding himself between the two attacks, penned in with the animals that retreated on him, ran to a corner where there were several cages of polar bears, threw open the doors of these, prodded the bears out with a pole, and hid himself on top of the farthest cage.
Lions and leopards would run from water. Polar bears, he knew, would not.
If “Shine” did not know, it was not long before he learned. He and Cripps had come as far as their hose would allow them when the first of the big white beasts, attracted by the splash of water, came shouldering along the passageway with its mouth open, panting. “Shine” raised a vainglorious whoop and put the hose on it. It rose on its hind legs to take the water, and it went over on its back in a deliciously cool bath, pawing at the stream that struck it rather too heavily for play. It rolled over, fighting, and came to all fours with a growl. The water struck into its eyes and into its open jaws; it dodged blindly, biting less playfully; it began to wrestle and roll about, fighting in on the stream.
“Gee!” he cried. “This is a garden hose to that brute. Here’s another!”
He caught the second as it came, and toppled it over on the first. It joined in the game. While he held one back, the other ran in under the stream, and together they gained ground on him. When the third suddenly loped up and presented its great bulk to the bath, he began to shout for a bigger line, retreating as the bears worked in on him. He was glancing back over his shoulder anxiously for aid, when he saw a lion crouching in the passage behind him, dripping wet, but of a ferocious aspect. He lost his voice. He swung his pipe, gasping, at the newcomer and drove it back. He turned on the bears again and caught them as they came in a body. He stopped two of them, but he missed the third, and it rose with an angry growl seemingly right over him and he dropped his pipe and fled with a yell.