The circus men saw that something was wrong between Tamba and Nero, so they moved the cages farther apart, and then Nero and Tamba could not have reached each other if their tails had been twice as long. And then Nero went to sleep, and so did Tamba, waiting for the evening show to start. And as Tamba slept he dreamed of the Indian jungle, and wished he could go back there.
And soon something wonderful was going to happen to him.
That night in the big tent, which was bright with electric lights, Tamba did his tricks—catching a piece of dog biscuit off his nose, leaping through a paper hoop, and walking around on his hind legs. Nero also did his tricks, one of which was sitting up like a begging dog on a sort of stool like an overturned wash tub.
And Dido, the dancing bear, did his funny tricks on the wooden platform, which was strapped on the back of Tum Tum, the jolly elephant. So the boys and the girls, and the big folks, too, who went to the circus had lots of fun watching the animals.
But, all the while, Nero was watching for a chance to play a trick on Tamba. And at last he found a way. It was three or four days after Tamba had tickled Nero with the tail tip, and the circus had traveled on a railroad to a far-distant town.
In the animal tent the lions, tigers, elephants, monkeys and ponies had been given their dinners and were being watered. Tamba was taking a long drink from his tin of water, and wishing it could be turned into a jungle spring, when, all of a sudden:
Splash!
A lot of water spurted up into his face, and some, getting into his nose, made him sneeze. Then he looked and saw that a bone, off which all the meat had been gnawed, had come in through the bars of his cage and had fallen into his water-pan. It was the falling of the dry bone into the water that had made it splash up.
“Who did that? Who threw that bone at me?” growled Tamba. “Who made it splash water all over me?”