Joe caught up the rope, and, without trying to straighten out the coils, threw it at the big animal, which was opposite him, Joe having leaped to one side. And he did by accident what the circus men had for some time been trying to do by design. He threw coils of the rope about the short legs of the "river horse" and down went the hippopotamus with a thud.
"That's the stuff! Good work!" cried the animal's keeper. "Quick now, boys! Rope him!"
Before the beast could get up he was pounced upon by a crowd of the animal men and securely bound with ropes.
"Whew!" exclaimed the keeper, as he faced Joe in the now gray dawn of the morning, "that was some work!"
"How did he get loose?" Joe asked.
"The bottom dropped out of his wagon. Must have been rotten. He dropped with it and started off on his own hook. He walked all over a lot of us while we were trying to corner him."
"Walked on us! Say, he danced a jig on my stomach!" complained Bill Dudley, one of the animal men, as he came limping up. "Have you got him safe?"
"Yes," replied the keeper.
"Well, don't let him get loose again. He almost made a pancake of me!"
The circus men now led the subdued beast to temporary quarters until his own cage could be repaired, and the work of unloading the rest of the circus was proceeded with.