They said to bring on the elephant, and they'd take care of him. So,
after the performance I led old Albert back to a piece of woods behind
the tents, and we hitched tackle to his four legs and stretched him out
between four trees so he couldn't move, and then the rifle corps lined
up about twelve paces off, ready to shoot. That elephant knew he was
going to die; yes, sir, he knew it perfectly well, but he was a lot
cooler than some of those riflemen. Why, there was one fellow on the end
of the line shaking so he could hardly aim. You see, they were afraid
old Albert would break loose and come at 'em if they only wounded him.
"'Do you men know where to shoot?' I called out.
"'We're going to shoot at his head,' answered the captain.
"'All right,' said I; 'you'd better send for lanterns and more
ammunition. You're liable to be shooting here all night.'
"'Then, where shall we shoot?' asked the captain.
"'That depends,' I answered. 'If you can send your bullets straight into
his eye at a forty-five degree up-slant, you'll fix him all right. But
if you don't hit his eye you can shoot the rest of his head full of
holes, and he won't care. You've got to reach his brain, and that's a
little thing in where I'm telling you.'
"This made the captain do some thinking, for Albert looked awful big and
his eye looked awful small, and they didn't want to bungle the job.
'Well,' said he, 'is there any other place we can aim at except his
eye?'
"'Aim here,' I told him, and I drew a circle with a piece of chalk just
back of his left foreleg, a circle about as big as your hand. When a man
has cut up as many elephants as I have he knows where the heart is. But
most men don't.
"After this there was a hush, while the whole crowd held its breath, and
old Albert looked at me out of his little eyes as much as to say, 'So
you're going to let 'em do me after all, are you?' and then came the
sharp command, 'Ready, fire!' and thirty-two rifle-balls started for
that chalk-mark. And how many do you think got there? Five out of
thirty-two; I counted 'em, but five did the business. Poor old Albert
dropped without a sound or a struggle." Newman sighed at the memory.
"Isn't there some exaggeration," I asked, "in what you said about
shooting an elephant full of holes without killing him?"
"Exaggeration!" answered Newman. "Not a bit of it. Why, there was an
elephant named Samson with the Cole show, and he got loose once in a
town out in Idaho and ran through the streets crazy mad, killing horses,
smashing into houses, ripping the whole place wide open. Well, sir, they
shot at him with Winchesters, revolvers, shot-guns, every darned thing
they had, until that elephant was full of lead, but he went off all
right the next day, and never seemed any the worse for it up to the day
when he was burned to death with the Barnum show at Bridgeport."
The mention of this catastrophe reminded me of reports that wild beasts
in a burning menagerie are silent before the flames, and I asked Mr.
Newman if he believed it.
"No, sir," said he; "it isn't true. I was in Bridgeport when the Barnum
show burned up, and I never heard such roaring and screaming. It was
awful. Even the rhinoceros, which can't make much noise, was running
around the yard grunting and squealing, with flames four feet high
shooting up from his back and sides. You see, a rhinoceros is almost
solid fat, and as soon as he caught fire he burned like an oil-tank."
"Didn't you save any lions or tigers?"
He shook his head. "Wasn't any use trying. They'd have been shot by
policemen as fast as we could get 'em out. Besides, we couldn't get 'em
out. We concentrated on elephants, and saved all the herd but five.
There were free elephants all over Bridgeport that night, and a queer
thing was we had to look sharp that some of the elephants we'd saved
didn't run back into the fire. You know how horses will go back into a
burning stable. Well, elephants are just the same. That's how we lost
the white elephant. She walked straight into the blaze, when she might
just as well have walked out through the open door."
By this time most of the company at "Billy's" had gathered about to
listen, for Newman was a veteran among veterans, and was now in the full
swing of reminiscence. He went back to his earliest days, back to Putnam
County, New York, where young men might well be drawn to the circus
life, so many famous showmen has this region produced--"Jim" Kelly and
Seth B. Howes and Langway and the Baileys.
"I started with Langway, the old lion-tamer," said Newman, "and he was
one of the best. I'll never forget what he told me once when he was
breaking in a den of lions and tigers--there were three lions and two
tigers, all full grown and fresh from the jungle.
"'Bill,' said he, 'I'm an old man, and this here is my last den. I won't
break in no more big cats, but I'll break this den in so they'll never
work for another man after I'm gone. It'll look easy what I do, and
folks'll want you to tackle 'em, Bill, but don't you never do it, for if
you do these cats'll chew ye up sure.'
[Illustration: MAN IN CAGE WITH LIONS.]
"Well, he worked that den in great shape for a year or so, and then he
died, and I minded his words. I let those lions and tigers alone. They
hired a lion-tamer named Davis to work 'em, and sure enough he got
chewed up bad, just as the old man said he would, and the end of it was
that nobody ever _did_ work that den again; it couldn't be done,
although they'd been like kittens with Langway. What he did to 'em's
always been a mystery."
Newman paused, as impressive story-tellers do, and then, drawing once
more upon his memories, he told how a terrible death came to poor
"Patsy" Meagher as he was drilling a herd of elephants once in winter
quarters at Columbus, Ohio.
"It was the day before Thanksgiving," he said. "I'll never forget it,
and a big bull elephant named Syd took the order wrong, went 'right
face' instead of 'left face,' or something, and 'Patsy' got mad and
hooked him pretty hard. Some think it was 'Patsy's' fault, because he
gave the wrong order by mistake and Syd did what he said, while the
other elephants did the thing he meant to say. Anyhow, Syd turned on
'Patsy' and let him have both tusks, brass balls and all, right through
the body. Killed him in half a minute. Why, sir, they took 'Patsy's'
watch out through his back. That's the sort of thing you're liable to
run up against."
"Did they kill Syd?" I asked.
"No; they gave him the benefit of the doubt. You see, it ain't square to
blame an elephant for obeying orders."
Then came the story of how they killed bad old Pilot at the Madison
Square Garden back in 1883, fought his hard spirit all night long with
clubs and pitchforks and prods and hot irons, one hundred men flaying
and jabbing in relays against a poor, bound animal that died rather than
yield--died without a sound as day was breaking. "Yes, sir," said
Newman; "he never squealed, he wouldn't squeal, and three minutes before
he died he nearly killed me with a swing of his trunk. Oh, he was game
all right, Pilot was."
Newman came back to the difficulty of working animals broken in by
another tamer, but he declared that the thing can be done in some cases
if the new tamer has in him that unknown something to which all wild
beasts submit. His own wife, for example, after a dozen years of
peaceful married life, determined one day that she would make a herd of
eight big Asiatic elephants obey her, a thing no woman had ever
attempted. And within three weeks she did it, and drilled the herd in
public for years afterward--in fact, became a greater star than her
husband. All of which was most unusual, and due entirely to her
exceptional nerve and physical power. "Why, sir," said Newman, proudly,
"she was six feet tall and built like an athlete. She--she only died a
few years ago, and--and--" That gulp and the catch in his voice told the
whole story. This was no longer a dauntless elephant-trainer, but a
stricken, heart-broken man. What now were glories of the ring to
him--his wife was dead!
II
METHODS OF LION-TAMERS AND THE STORY OF BRUTUS'S ATTACK ON MR. BOSTOCK
THE wild-beast tamer as generally pictured is a mysterious person who
stalks about sternly in high boots and possesses a remarkable power of
the eye that makes lions and tigers quail at his look and shrink away.
He rules by fear, and the crack of his whip is supposed to bring
memories of torturing points and red-hot irons.
Such is the story-book lion-tamer, and I may as well say at once that
outside of story-books he has small existence. There is scarcely any
truth in this theory of hate for hate and conquest by fear. It is no
more fear that makes a lion walk on a ball than it is fear that makes a
horse pull a wagon. It is habit. The lion is perfectly _willing_ to walk
on the ball, and he has reached that mind, not by cruel treatment, but
by force of his trainer's patience and kindness and superior
intelligence.
[Illustration: BEGINNING THE TRAINING.]
Of course a wild-beast tamer should have a quick eye and a delicate
sense of hearing, so that he may be warned of a sudden spring at him or
a rush from behind; and it is important that he be a sober man, for
alcohol breaks the nerve or gives a false courage worse than folly: but
the quality on which he must chiefly rely and which alone can make him a
_great_ tamer--not a second-rate bungler--is a genuine fondness for
his animals. This does not mean that the animals will necessarily be
fond of the tamer; some will be fond of him, some will be indifferent to
him, some will fear and hate him. Nor will the tamer's fondness protect
him from fang and claw. We shall see that there is danger always,
accident often, but without the fondness there would be greater danger
and more frequent accident. A fondness for lions and tigers gives
sympathy for them, sympathy gives understanding of them, and
understanding gives mastery of them, or as much mastery as is possible.
What but this fondness would keep a tamer constantly with his animals,
not only in the public show (the easiest part), but in the dens and
treacherous runway, in the strange night hours, in the early morning
romp, when no one is looking, when there is no reason for being with
them except the tamer's own joy in it?
I do not purpose now to present in detail the methods of taming wild
beasts; rather what happens after they are tamed: but I may say that a
lion-tamer always begins by spending weeks or months in gaining a new
animal's confidence. Day after day he will stand for a long time outside
the cage, merely looking at the lion, talking to him, impressing upon
the beast a general familiarity with his voice and person. And each
time, as he goes away, he is careful to toss in a piece of meat as a
pleasant memento of his visit.
[Illustration: COMING TO CLOSE QUARTERS.]
Later he ventures inside the bars, carrying some simple weapon--a whip,
a rod, perhaps a broom, which is more formidable than might be supposed,
through the jab of its sharp bristles. One tamer used a common chair
with much success against unbroken lions. If the creature came at him,
there were the four legs in his face; and soon the chair came to
represent boundless power to that ignorant lion. He feared it and
hated it, as was seen on one occasion when the tamer left it in the cage
and the lion promptly tore it into splinters.
[Illustration: THE LION DESTROYS THE CHAIR.]
Days may pass before the lion will let his tamer do more than merely
stay inside the cage at a distance. Very well; the tamer stays there. He
waits hour after hour, week after week, until a time comes when the lion
will let him move nearer, will permit the touch of his hand, will come
forward for a piece of meat, and at last treat him like a friend, so
that finally he may sit there quite at ease, and even read his
newspaper, as one man did.
Lastly begins the practice of tricks: the lion must spring to a pedestal
and be fed; he must jump from one pedestal to another and be fed, must
keep a certain pose and be fed. A bit of meat is always the final
argument, and the tamer wins (if he wins at all, for sometimes he fails)
by patience and kindness.
"There is no use getting angry with a lion," said a well-known tamer to
me, "and there is no use in carrying a revolver. If you shoot a lion or
injure him with any weapon, it is your loss, for you must buy another
lion, and the chances are that he will kill you, anyway, if he starts to
do it. The thing is to keep him from starting."
I once had a talk with the lion-tamer Philadelphia on the subject of
breaking lions, and heard from him what need a tamer has of patience. "I
have sat in a lion's cage," said Philadelphia, "two or three hours every
day for weeks, yes, for months, waiting for him to come out of his sulky
corner and take a piece of meat from me. And that was only a start
toward the mastery."
"Wouldn't he attack you?"
Philadelphia smiled. "He did at first, but that was soon settled. It
isn't hard to best a lion if you go at it right. I usually carry a pair
of clubs. Some men prefer a broom, because the bristles do great work in
a lion's face, without injuring him. But the finest weapon you can use
against a fighting lion is a hose of water. That stops his fight, only
you mustn't have the water too cold, or he may get pneumonia. You
mightn't think it, but lions are very delicate. In using the clubs, you
must be careful not to strike 'em hard across the back. You'd be
surprised to know how easy it is to break a lion's backbone, especially
if it's a young lion."
[Illustration: THE TAMER'S TRIUMPH. READING HIS NEWSPAPER IN THE LION'S
CAGE.]
In support of this statement that lions are delicate, I remember
hearing old John Smith, director of the Central Park Menagerie, set
forth a list of lions' ailments, and the coddling and doctoring they
require. Lion medicine is usually administered in the food or drink, but
there are cases requiring more heroic measures, and then the animal must
be bound down before the doctors can treat him. It should be remembered
that lions in city menageries are more dangerous than circus lions,
since they are either wild ones brought straight from the jungle and
never tamed or rebellious ones, anarchist lions that have turned against
their tamers, perhaps killed them, and have finally been sold to any
zooelogical garden that would take them.
"When we have to rope a lion down to doctor him," said Smith, "we drop
nooses through the top bars and catch his four legs, and let down one
around his body. Then we haul these fast, and there you are. You can
feel his pulse or give him stuff or pull out one of his teeth or
anything."
"It must be pretty hard to pull a lion's tooth," I remarked.
"Not very. Here's the forceps I use; you see it isn't very big. This is
for the upper jaw, and that other one is for the lower jaw."
I made some remark, meant to be facetious, about not giving lions gas,
but the old man took me up sharply. "Certainly we give 'em gas. How else
in the world do you think we operate on 'em? They get chloroform same as
a person. I have a bag for it that fits over a lion's head, and pulls up
tight with a string. In the bag is a sponge saturated with chloroform,
and the first you know off goes Mr. Lion into quiet sleep, and you can
do what you like with him. But you have to be mighty careful not to give
him too much, and look sharp at his heart action, or you'll have a dead
lion on your hands. Say, I've found out one thing chloroforming lions
that lots of doctors don't know. It's this, that if a lion comes back
hard to consciousness after you've put him to sleep, you can help things
along by catching hold of his tail and heaving him up on his head. That
sends the blood down to his brain, where you want it, and pretty soon
you'll see his muscles begin to twitch, and back he comes. I told a
doctor about this once, and he said he'd done the very same thing with
patients."
Coming again to the need of patience, let me quote my friend "Bill"
Newman. "Why," said he, "I've spent weeks and weeks teaching an elephant
to ring a bell--just that one thing. You have to sit by him hour after
hour, giving him the bell in his trunk and giving it to him again when
he drops it, and then again and again for a whole morning, and then for
many mornings until he gets the idea and rings it right. It's the same
way teaching an elephant to fan himself or teaching tricks to a clown
elephant; you have to wait and wait, and never give up. Once an elephant
understands what you want he'll do it, but it's awful hard sometimes
making 'em understand."
"How do you teach them to stand on their heads and on their hind legs?"
I asked.
"With the same kind of patience and with tackle. Just heave 'em up or
roll 'em over the way they're supposed to go and then keep at it. Some
learn quicker than others. Once in a while you get a mean one, and then
look out."
An instance of the affection felt for wild beasts by their tamers is
offered in the case of Madame Bianca, the French tamer, who in the
winter of 1900 was with the Bostock Wild Animal Show giving daily
exhibitions in Baltimore, where her skill and daring with lions and
tigers earned wide admiration. It will be remembered how fire descended
suddenly on this menagerie one night and destroyed the animals amid
fearful scenes. And in the morning Bianca stood in the ruins and looked
upon the charred bodies of her pets. Had she lost her dearest friends,
she could scarcely have shown deeper grief. She was in despair, and
declared that she would never tame another group; she would leave the
show business. And when the menagerie was stocked afresh with lions and
tigers Bianca would not go near their cages. These were lions indeed,
but not _her_ lions, and she shook her head and mourned for "Bowzer,"
the handsomest lioness in captivity, and "Spitfire," and "Juliette," and
the black-maned "Brutus."
This recalls a story that Mr. Bostock told me, showing how Bianca's
fondness for her lions persisted even in the face of fierce attack. It
was in Kansas City, and for some days Spitfire had been working badly,
so that on this particular afternoon Bianca had spent two hours in the
big exhibition cage trying to get the lioness into good form. But
Spitfire remained sullen and refused to do one perfectly easy thing, a
jump over a pedestal.
"Ask Mr. Bostock to please come here," called Bianca, finally, quite at
her wit's end, with the performance hour approaching and hers the chief
act. To go on with Spitfire in rebellion would never do, for the spirit
of mischief spreads among lions and tigers exactly as it spreads among
children. Spitfire _must_ jump over that pedestal.
Mr. Bostock arrived presently, and at once entered the cage, carrying
two whips, as is the custom. There is something in this man that
impresses animals and tamers alike. It is not only that he is big and
strong, and loves his animals, and does not fear them; that would
scarcely account for his extraordinary prestige, which is his rather
because he _knows_ lions and tigers as only a man can who has literally
spent his life with them. From father and grandfather he has inherited
precious and unusual lore of the cages. He was born in a menagerie, he
married the daughter of a menagerie owner, he sleeps always within a few
feet of the dens, he eats with roars of lions in his ears. And his
principle is, and always has been, that he will enter _any_ cage at
_any_ time if a real need calls him--which has led to many a situation
like that created now by Spitfire's disobedience.
There were many groups in the menagerie at this time, each with its
regular tamer; and while Bostock, as owner and director, watched over
all of them, it often happened that months would pass without his
putting foot inside this or that particular cage. And in the present
case he was practically a stranger to the four lions and the tiger now
ranged around on their pedestals in a semi-circle thirty feet in
diameter, with big Brutus in the middle and snarling Spitfire at one
end.
"Well," said Mr. Bostock, explaining what happened, "I saw that Bianca
had made a mistake in handling Spitfire from too great a distance. She
had stood about seven feet away, so I stepped three feet closer and
lifted one of my whips. There were just two things Spitfire could do:
she could spring at me and have trouble, or she could jump over the
pedestal and have no trouble. She growled a little, looked at me, and
then she jumped over that pedestal like a lady. I had called her bluff.
[Illustration: BIANCA RESCUES BOSTOCK FROM "BRUTUS."]
"The rest was easy. I put her through some other tricks, circled her
around the cage a couple of times, and brought her back to her corner.
Then, as she crouched there and snarled at me, I played a tattoo with
my whip-handle on the floor just in front of her. It was just a sort of
flourish to finish off with, and it was one thing too much; for in doing
this I turned quite away from the rest of the group and made Brutus
think that I meant to hurt the lioness. He said to himself: 'Hullo!
Here's a stranger in our cage taking a whip to Spitfire. I'll just
settle _him_.' And before I could move he sprang twenty feet off his
pedestal, set his fangs in my thigh, and dragged me over to Bianca, as
if to prove his gallantry. Then the Frenchwoman did a clever thing: she
clasped her arms around his big neck, drew his head up, and fired her
revolver close to his ear. Of course she fired only a blank cartridge,
but it brought Brutus to obedience, for that was Bianca's regular signal
in the act for the lions to take their pedestals; and the habit of his
work was so strong in the old fellow that he dropped me and jumped back
to his place.
"There wasn't any more to it except that I lay five weeks in bed with my
wounds. But this will show you how Bianca loved those lions: she
wouldn't let me lift a hand to punish Brutus. Of course I called for
irons as soon as I got up, and, wounded or not, I would have taught Mr.
Brutus a few things before I left that cage if I could have had my way.
But Bianca pleaded for him so hard--why, she actually cried--that I
hadn't the heart to go against her. She said it was partly my own fault
for turning my back,--which was true,--and that Brutus was a good lion
and had only tried to defend his mate, and a lot more, with tears and
teasing, until I let him off, although I knew I could never enter
Brutus's cage again after leaving it without showing myself master.
That's always the way with lions: if you once lose the upper hand you
can never get it back."
III
BONAVITA DESCRIBES HIS FIGHT WITH SEVEN LIONS AND GEORGE ARSTINGSTALL
TELLS HOW HE CONQUERED A MAD ELEPHANT
IN the course of days spent with Mr. Bostock and his menagerie, I
observed many little instances of the tamer's affection for his animals.
I could see it in the constant fondling of the big cats by Bostock
himself, and by Bonavita, his chief tamer, and even by the cage grooms.
And no matter how great the crush of business, there was always time for
visiting a sick lioness out in the stable, who would never be better,
poor thing, but should have all possible comforts for her last days. And
late one afternoon I stood by while Bonavita led a powerful,
yellow-maned lion into the arena cage and held him, as a mother might
hold a suffering child, while the doctor, reaching cautiously through
the bars, cut away a growth from the beast's left eye. It is true they
used a local anesthetic; but even so, it hurt the lion, and Bonavita's
position as he knelt and stroked the big head and spoke soothing words
seemed to me as far as possible from secure. Yet it was plain that his
only thought was to ease the lion's pain.
"I couldn't have done that with all my lions," Bonavita said to me after
the operation; "but this one is specially trained. You know he lets me
put my head in his mouth."
Bonavita is a handsome, slender man, with dark hair and eyes, quite the
type of a Spanish gentleman; and I liked him not only for his mastery of
twenty-odd lions, but because he had a gentle manner and was modest
about his work. According to Mr. Bostock, Bonavita has but two strong
affections: one for his old mother, and one for his lions. Occasionally
I could get him aside for a talk, and that was a thing worth doing.
"People ask me such foolish questions about wild beasts," he said one
day. "For instance, they want to know which would win in a fight, a lion
or a tiger. I tell them that is like asking which would win in a fight,
an Irishman or a Scotchman. It all depends on the particular tiger you
have and the particular lion. Animals are just as different as men: some
are good, some bad; some you can trust and some you can't trust."