The sun was brightly shining when Tamba, the tame tiger, awakened in his bed at the dock. I call it a “bed” for he had snuggled down on a pile of bags between some boxes and bales, and this is as good a bed as ever a tiger asks for. Often they are glad enough to sleep on the bare boards of the circus cages, and even in their jungle caves they never have more than a pile of dried leaves or grass.
Tamba could look out through the cracks between the boxes and bales and see the yellow sunshine on the dock. The sunshine made yellow stripes, almost the color of Tamba’s tawny coat. He could feel the soft, warm wind blowing in on him, and he could also smell the salt water.
“I am in the right place at last,” thought Tamba. “But I must be careful. I do not want to be caught when I am so near my jungle.”
You see Tamba did not know just how far it was down the big salt river and across the big, salt ocean to his jungle home. All he knew was that the salt water here smelled just as the salt water had smelled when he was put on the ship, to be brought away from his home in India.
And there were ships at the dock. Tamba could see them, but he knew better than to run out now and get on board one. For, now that it was daylight, there were many men on the dock. They were driving their wagons and drays about, laden as they were with things to go on board the ships, and Tamba knew that if he ran out, in plain sight of these men, some of them would chase him, and, perhaps, catch him.
“So I’ll just stay hidden here until it gets dark again,” thought Tamba to himself. “Then I’ll go on one of those big floating houses, which Tum Tum says are called ships, and I’ll get back to my jungle. If I wait until night no one will see me, and then they can’t catch me to send me back to the circus.”
So Tamba curled up in his snug little nest among the boxes and barrels on the pier, and remained hidden. Of course if men had come to take away those particular boxes they would have found Tamba, but, as it happened, they did not, and so he was safe.
After a while, though, Tamba began to feel hungry. Milk for a tiger, even though it happened to be the full top of a can, is not enough. He must have meat, and meat was what Tamba wanted just then. He sniffed and smelled around among the boxes and bales which formed his nest, but no meat smell came to his nose. If one of the boxes had happened to have meat in it, perhaps Tamba might have clawed it open and gotten a meal. But, as it was, there was nothing for him to eat.
“Never mind,” he thought to himself; “perhaps to-night, when I get on the ship, I can find something good to eat.”
But Tamba was to have something before then. About noon the dock on the edge of the salty river, where many ships were tied, became a very busy place. Though Tamba did not know it, the ships were being loaded with things to be taken across the sea and sold.