“Well, why shouldn’t I be?” asked Chunky. “It’s true I’ve been taken away from the river I liked so well, away from the jungle, away from my father and mother, away from Mumpy, my sister, and Bumpy, my funny brother. But what of that? I’d have had to leave them some day, anyhow, and why not now? Besides, I am going to be in a circus, and I may meet Mappo, the merry monkey.”
“I wish I could be jolly, like you,” said one of the monkeys.
“Well, just think what fun you may be going to have, and not about the trouble you’re in now, and you’ll be happy,” said the hippo, and he opened his mouth as wide as he could.
The black hunters, who were just then bringing up great quantities of grass for the hippos to eat, thought Chunky was opening his mouth to take a big bite of the food, but, instead, he was smiling because he felt so jolly. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, when a hippo is laughing, or when he is smiling, or when he just opens his mouth to eat, but once you learn to know the difference, you’ll never make a mistake. Chunky was smiling.
None of the other wild animals that had been caught in the jungle and brought to the sea, felt as happy as Chunky did, though the other two hippos were pretty jolly. Having a bath in the sea and getting sweet grass to eat made them that way, I guess.
And now began a busy time, for all the animal cages—in some of which were lions, big apes, snakes, monkeys, and deer with big horns, besides the hippos—had to be hoisted up into the ship, or the “floating house,” as some of the jungle beasts called it. In this ship the animals would be carried across the ocean from Africa to America, where they were to be put on exhibition in circuses or in zoological parks or in menageries.
Of course Chunky and his friends knew nothing of this. They did not even know what a circus was, though Chunky had heard Tum Tum talk about one, and about books and adventures.
“I shall be very glad to get to a circus, I think, and off this floating house, or whatever it is,” thought Chunky, when the ship had started. Chunky was in his cage up on deck, as were his two hippo friends and some of the larger animals. The others were under the deck, in the hold of the ship.
“I don’t like this at all,” Chunky said to the other hippos. “It’s too swishy-swashy like!”
He meant the ship was rolling to and fro, and pitching and tossing up and down with the waves, for it was soon out of sight of land, and going far away from Africa and the jungle.