“Now is the time for me to run out and go to the salt water,” said the tiger to himself. “This time I shall surely get back to my jungle, I hope.”
Carefully and softly, Tamba crept along the subway platform. He passed out of the ticket gate, right in front of the man in the little booth, [but the man was asleep and did not see the tiger].
Up the same steps down which he had run some hours before, Tamba now crept. He reached the open air and could see the stars glittering overhead. The night was clear and warm. Tamba liked it very much. Eagerly he sniffed the air and he smelled salt water. He turned his face toward the river and began to stalk slowly along. He wanted to cross the salt water and get home to his jungle.
And as Tamba slunk along he began to remember how hungry he was. Since leaving the circus he had not eaten very much.
“Oh, if I could have a nice, juicy piece of meat now, how good it would taste!” thought Tamba. But of course no meat stores were open at that hour, and, if there had been, Tamba could not have gotten any meat from them. If the tiger had strolled, no matter how quietly and politely, into a meat shop, men would have driven him away, or have caught him and shut him up in a cage.
“But I do want something to eat!” sadly thought the tiger.
Just then a smell came to his nose that made him lick his lips with his red tongue and made him sniff very hard with his black nose.
“I smell milk!” thought Tamba. “And it isn’t sour milk, either, like that which Squinty, the comical pig, was drinking. I smell fresh milk, and I wish I had some!”
When Tamba smelled anything good he knew how to find it, even if he could not see it. He just had to “follow his nose” until he came to it. All jungle animals, and even your dogs and cats, do that. So when Tamba smelled the milk he turned his nose toward it and walked along until he came to it. And where do you suppose it was?