First they hoisted up, with long ropes, the cage which Short Tooth occupied. This hippo had not heard much of the storm, for he had stuck his head under water. But as soon as he was lifted out and felt the wind blowing across the deck, he knew there was great danger.
“Oh, I wouldn’t like to be in the ocean now!” thought Short Tooth, as he saw the big waves, almost as high as the masts of the ship.
“Nor I,” added Gimpy, as he, in his cage, was lifted out of the tank. “I’d be afraid.”
Then it came the turn of Chunky to be lifted out. The sailors fastened ropes to the top of his cage, and began to pull on them to raise him out of the tank. All the while the ship was pitching and tossing, sometimes almost going in under the big waves that sloshed around on deck near the tank in which the hippos had been living. Some of the bigger animal cages had been put below the deck to keep them from being washed away.
All of a sudden, just as Chunky’s cage was being lifted out, the ship was struck by a very big wave—the largest yet. At the same time the wind blew very hard and the rain came down twice as bad as before.
“The rope is slipping!” cried one of the sailors, who was helping lift Chunky out of the tank. “The hippo’s ropes are slipping!”
“Hold them—don’t let him go overboard!” yelled the animal man.
But one of the sailors must have gotten some rain in his eyes, or else the ship went too deep into the water. How it happened, I can’t exactly say, but the next instant the big water tank, in which Chunky and his two friends had been kept for a while, slid off the deck into the ocean.
At the same time a big wave struck the sailors who had hold of the ropes on Chunky’s cage. They let go, and down the cage crashed to the deck, with Chunky in it.
“Ugh!” grunted Chunky as he came down with a thump. “Ugh! This is no fun!”