The band stopped abruptly, with a discord, and there was an instant of silence. Then we heard the stools and ladders clattering as the lions leaped down; and straightway four pair of lambent green spots burned out of the darkness and traveled swiftly about here and there, crossing and recrossing one another like the lights of steamers in a storm. Heretofore, the lions had been sluggish and inert; now they were aroused and alert in an instant, and we could hear the swift pad-pad of their heavy feet as they swung around the arena, and the sound of their great bodies rubbing against the bars of the cage as one and the other passed nearer to us.
I don’t think the audience at all appreciated the situation at first, for no one moved or seemed excited, and one shrill voice suggested that the band should play “When the Electric Lights Go Out.”
“Keep perfectly quiet, please!” called the tamer out of the darkness, and a certain peculiar ring in his voice was the first intimation of a possible danger.
But Toppan knew; and as we heard the tamer fumbling for the catch of the gate, which he somehow could not loose in the darkness, he said, with a rising voice: “He wants to get that gate open pretty quick.”
But for their restless movements the lions were quiet; they uttered no sound, which was a bad sign. Blinking and dazed by the garish blue-whiteness of a few moments before, they could see perfectly now where the tamer was blind.
“Listen,” said Toppan. Near to us, and on the inside of the cage, we could hear a sound as of some slender body being whisked back and forth over the surface of the floor. In an instant I guessed what it was; one of the lions was crouched there, whipping his sides with his tail.
“When he stops that, he’ll spring,” said Toppan, excitedly.
“Bring a light, Jerry—quick!” came the tamer’s voice.
People were clambering to their feet by this time, talking loud, and we heard a woman cry out.
“Please keep as quiet as possible, ladies and gentlemen!” cried the tamer; “it won’t do to excite——”