This was true enough. The beast, after a fruitless effort to force a way out of the cage, retreated to a corner and lay down, snarling and growling.
"I don't know what's gotten into Princess," said the trainer as he looked at her. "She never acted this way before."
"It's a good thing she showed her temper before you got in the cage with her, and not afterward," remarked Joe, as he was about to pass on to the performance tent.
"That's right," agreed Señor Bogardi. "And you did the right thing in the nick of time, my boy. Only for your trapeze bar she'd have been out among the crowd," and he looked at the men, women and children, who were now calming down.
The small panic was soon over, and in order to quiet the lioness a big canvas was thrown over her cage, so she would not be annoyed by onlookers.
"I guess she needs a rest," her trainer said. "I'll let her alone for a day or so, and she may get over this."
Joe went on into the tent where he was to do his trapeze acts. It was nearly time for him to appear, and the other two Lascalla Brothers were waiting for him. They would do an act together, and Joe one of his single feats, however, before the three appeared in a triple act.
The young performer was straightening out the ropes attached to his trapeze, when he noticed that the bar of the small one, which he had thrust into the door of the lioness' cage, was cracked.
"Hello!" exclaimed Joe. "This won't do. I can't risk doing tricks up at the top of the tent on a cracked bar. It might hold, and again it might not."
He tried the cracked bar in his hands. It gave a little, but seemed fairly strong.