Down the subway steps he ran. He saw a dark tunnel stretching out both ways from the station. It was light on the station platforms where the subway trains stopped, but beyond this place, at each side, the dark tunnel of the subway stretched out.
Tamba saw crowds of persons getting on and off the train, and as quick as a flash he hid behind a candy counter and newspaper stand, where it was partly dark. Tamba did not want any men to see him now, for since he had smelled the salt water he wished, more than ever, to get across it and back to his jungle.
“Well,” thought the tame tiger as he crouched in the darkness behind the candy stand, where the boy tending it, busy selling evening papers, did not notice him, “well, I don’t know what this all is, nor what it’s about, but I guess this isn’t the kind of cave I’m looking for. It isn’t a jungle cave at all. It’s much too light and too noisy. It’s as bad as the circus. I must get out of here if I can.”
But Tamba knew better than to rush out when so many people were coming and going. He wanted to wait until they had gone. But there were so many of them it seemed that they would never go. And pretty soon a policeman, and several excited men who did not wear blue suits with brass buttons ran down the subway steps.
“He came right down here!” said one excited man. “My wife and I were walking along the stone wall by the park when the tiger jumped over right in front of us. Then he ran down these subway steps.”
“Then he must be here yet,” said the policeman. “And if he is, we’ll catch him and send him back to the zoo. If he came out of one of the cages there he must be pretty tame, and he won’t hurt any one. Come on, now, everybody! We’ll have a tiger hunt in the subway!”
Of course Tamba did not know what all this talk meant, but he knew enough to guess that the policeman and the other men were trying to capture him. So Tamba wanted to get to a better place to hide than just behind a newspaper stand. And he was lucky enough to find it.
The lower part of the stand was hollow, like a big box. In it the newspaper boy kept his old papers, empty candy boxes and the like, and there was plenty of room for a tiger in there. There was a door to this underneath place, and the door happened to be open.
Tamba saw it, saw, too, that it was dark and quiet underneath the stand, and so he crawled in under there. A better place for a runaway tiger could not have been found. Tamba curled softly up among some bundles of old papers, and there he stayed while the hunt was going on.
Up and down the subway station platforms the policeman and the others looked for the tame tiger. But they never thought of looking beneath the hollow newspaper and candy stand, and there Tamba stayed as snugly as you please.