“Why are you so good to the hippos?” one of the sailors asked this animal man one day.
“I want them to know and like me,” he answered. “Then I can teach them a few tricks to do when they are in the circus.”
“Ho! Ho!” laughed the sailor. “What tricks can a great, big clumsy hippo do?”
“Well, not very many, it is true,” admitted the animal man. “Not as many as an elephant. But maybe I can teach Chunky to do a few.”
The animal man seemed to like Chunky a little better than he did the other two hippos, though he was kind to all three. Perhaps he saw that Chunky was a little smarter than Gimpy or Short Tooth.
After many days of steaming the ship came, at last, to a big city. Chunky did not know it was a city, but he knew it was quite different from his jungle. There were only a few trees here and there, and he could see no rivers with nice, muddy, oozy banks on which he might sleep. And it was very noisy, not at all like the jungle, where the only noises were the wind blowing in the trees, the howling of animals, the chatter of the monkeys, and the songs and screechings of birds.
With the other animals, some of them still seasick, and most of them very lonesome for the forest or jungle they had left, Chunky was hoisted off the ship in his cage and put on a big wagon. He was drawn through the city, but he could see nothing of it, for his cage was covered with a big sheet of canvas, such as tents are made of.
Then Chunky was taken to a large building, where his cage was set down among those containing Gimpy, Short Tooth, the lion, the monkeys and others.
“What place are we in now?” asked Chunky of the monkey who knew Mappo and Tum Tum. “Is this the circus?”