One day, when they had been steaming over the ocean a long while, the sun went under some clouds and it became very dark, though it was not night. The sailors ran here and there about the ship, making everything fast.
“We are going to have a bad storm!” cried the captain. “I hope none of the animals will get loose.”
“We must take the hippos out of the tank, and tie their cages fast on deck,” said the animal man. But, before that could be done, the storm came and the ship was in the midst of wind and rain.
CHAPTER IX
CHUNKY FALLS OVERBOARD
The storm was a very hard one, and it tossed the ship, large as she was, up and down and sidewise. Sometimes it seemed as if the steamer would go entirely down under the water, and again it seemed as if she would be tossed up to the angry clouds that blew along so fast overhead. The wind blew the rain so hard that the water drops sounded like hail stones.
“What shall we do about those hippos?” asked the animal man of the captain. “They are in the big tank, and that may slide overboard. It is so big you can not very well make it fast.”
“That is so,” answered the captain, who was wet through with the rain. “We had better lift the hippos out in their small cages. Those we can fasten to the deck more easily.”
So, though it rained and it blew, and the ship pitched and tossed, the sailors went to lift from the tank the small cages of the three hippos.