TAMBA AT THE DOCK
Queer as it may seem, Tamba had done that very thing. He had run
from the street into the opening of a subway station in a big city,
thinking it was a cave. And if you have ever been in a city where the
street cars run underground instead of on the surface, as wagons and
automobiles do, or instead of up in the air, as the elevated trains
run, then you will understand how it was that Tamba made his mistake.
For it was a mistake to go down into the subway, thinking it was a cave.
The rumbling and roaring sound Tamba heard was a train coming along the
subway, and, being underground, it made much more noise and racket than
it would have done up on the surface. So it is no wonder the tame tiger
thought it was a thunder storm.
Down the subway steps he ran. He saw a dark tunnel stretching out both
ways from the station. It was light on the station platforms where the
subway trains stopped, but beyond this place, at each side, the dark
tunnel of the subway stretched out.
Tamba saw crowds of persons getting on and off the train, and as quick
as a flash he hid behind a candy counter and newspaper stand, where it
was partly dark. Tamba did not want any men to see him now, for since
he had smelled the salt water he wished, more than ever, to get across
it and back to his jungle.
“Well,” thought the tame tiger as he crouched in the darkness behind
the candy stand, where the boy tending it, busy selling evening papers,
did not notice him, “well, I don’t know what this all is, nor what it’s
about, but I guess this isn’t the kind of cave I’m looking for. It
isn’t a jungle cave at all. It’s much too light and too noisy. It’s as
bad as the circus. I must get out of here if I can.”
But Tamba knew better than to rush out when so many people were coming
and going. He wanted to wait until they had gone. But there were so
many of them it seemed that they would never go. And pretty soon a
policeman, and several excited men who did not wear blue suits with
brass buttons ran down the subway steps.
“He came right down here!” said one excited man. “My wife and I were
walking along the stone wall by the park when the tiger jumped over
right in front of us. Then he ran down these subway steps.”
“Then he must be here yet,” said the policeman. “And if he is, we’ll
catch him and send him back to the zoo. If he came out of one of the
cages there he must be pretty tame, and he won’t hurt any one. Come on,
now, everybody! We’ll have a tiger hunt in the subway!”
Of course Tamba did not know what all this talk meant, but he knew
enough to guess that the policeman and the other men were trying to
capture him. So Tamba wanted to get to a better place to hide than just
behind a newspaper stand. And he was lucky enough to find it.
The lower part of the stand was hollow, like a big box. In it the
newspaper boy kept his old papers, empty candy boxes and the like, and
there was plenty of room for a tiger in there. There was a door to this
underneath place, and the door happened to be open.
Tamba saw it, saw, too, that it was dark and quiet underneath the
stand, and so he crawled in under there. A better place for a runaway
tiger could not have been found. Tamba curled softly up among some
bundles of old papers, and there he stayed while the hunt was going on.
Up and down the subway station platforms the policeman and the others
looked for the tame tiger. But they never thought of looking beneath
the hollow newspaper and candy stand, and there Tamba stayed as snugly
as you please.
“Well,” said the policeman at last to the man whose wife had screamed
so at the first sight of Tamba, “I guess you made a mistake, my friend.
You didn’t see any tiger at all. You dreamed it.”
“I’m sure I didn’t dream,” said the man. “I wasn’t asleep. I saw that
tiger come into this subway as plain as anything.”
“Well, then he must have run up the steps on the other side,” said the
policeman. “He could have done that before we got here. At any rate the
tiger is gone, and we may as well go out and look for him somewhere
else. He isn’t here!”
The excitement soon quieted down, the searchers went upstairs, and
Tamba was left to himself in his hiding place beneath the newspaper and
candy stand.
He could hear people walking up and down on the stone platform, and he
could hear them talking. They were talking about him, as it happened,
for the news of a tiger being loose somewhere in that part of the city
had spread. But Tamba, of course, did not know what the men and women
subway passengers were saying. He could hear the rumble and roar of the
subway trains, and they sounded something like the trains on which the
circus traveled from town to town. But Tamba did not come out of his
hiding place to look at them. He stayed quietly in the cubby-hole under
the stand.
[Illustration: But the man was asleep and did not see the tiger.]
After a while, as the hours passed, it became quieter in the subway.
There were fewer trains, and hardly any persons were traveling now. At
last, along about three o’clock in the morning, no trains ran at all.
The agent at the station went to sleep in his little booth, and the
newspaper boy had gone home long ago. Tamba thrust his head out of his
hiding place. He heard nothing and saw no one.
“Now is the time for me to run out and go to the salt water,” said the
tiger to himself. “This time I shall surely get back to my jungle, I
hope.”
Carefully and softly, Tamba crept along the subway platform. He passed
out of the ticket gate, right in front of the man in the little booth,
but the man was asleep and did not see the tiger.
Up the same steps down which he had run some hours before, Tamba now
crept. He reached the open air and could see the stars glittering
overhead. The night was clear and warm. Tamba liked it very much.
Eagerly he sniffed the air and he smelled salt water. He turned his
face toward the river and began to stalk slowly along. He wanted to
cross the salt water and get home to his jungle.
And as Tamba slunk along he began to remember how hungry he was. Since
leaving the circus he had not eaten very much.
“Oh, if I could have a nice, juicy piece of meat now, how good it would
taste!” thought Tamba. But of course no meat stores were open at that
hour, and, if there had been, Tamba could not have gotten any meat from
them. If the tiger had strolled, no matter how quietly and politely,
into a meat shop, men would have driven him away, or have caught him
and shut him up in a cage.
“But I do want something to eat!” sadly thought the tiger.
Just then a smell came to his nose that made him lick his lips with his
red tongue and made him sniff very hard with his black nose.
“I smell milk!” thought Tamba. “And it isn’t sour milk, either, like
that which Squinty, the comical pig, was drinking. I smell fresh milk,
and I wish I had some!”
When Tamba smelled anything good he knew how to find it, even if he
could not see it. He just had to “follow his nose” until he came to it.
All jungle animals, and even your dogs and cats, do that. So when Tamba
smelled the milk he turned his nose toward it and walked along until he
came to it. And where do you suppose it was?
Why, an early-morning milkman had left a big can of milk in front of a
grocery store, and it was this milk――some of which had slopped out from
the can――that Tamba had smelled.
“Well, here’s milk all right, that’s sure,” said Tamba to himself, as
he sniffed around the can in the doorway of the store. “But how can I
get it out? I can’t scratch or bite through this tin can. And, oh, how
hungry I am! A good, big drink of milk would make me feel much better!”
Tamba walked up and down in front of the can. It stood in the dark
corner of a sheltered doorway of a store on a main street, but at that
hour of the morning, after the milkman had passed, hardly any one was
ever out.
“I must have some of that milk!” thought the hungry Tamba. He pawed and
clawed at the can, hoping he could find some way of getting it open,
when, all of a sudden, he knocked the can right over. It fell to the
sidewalk with a clatter and a bang, and the cover came off.
Out gushed the white milk, and some of it spilled right into the big,
deep cover of the can itself. That was enough for Tamba. Here he had
the milk, in a dish all ready for him to lap it up with his red tongue,
and that is just what he did!
“My, but that’s good!” thought the tiger, as he drank all the milk out
of the can cover. “I am having better luck than at first. There is even
enough milk for that pig Squinty, if he should happen to come along.”
But of course Squinty was far away. Tamba lapped up all the milk from
the can cover, and then he saw where a little puddle had formed in
a hole in the sidewalk. Tamba took that milk, too, and then he felt
better.
“Now to go down to the salt water and find my jungle,” he said to
himself, as he licked up the last drops of milk.
So Tamba started off down the city streets once more, and because every
one was in bed and asleep no one saw him.
But there was a very much surprised store-keeper who, the next morning,
went to take in the big can of milk. It was upset and spilled.
“Ha! Some bad boys must have done this!” thought the store-keeper. “I
must tell the police!”
But wouldn’t he have opened wide his eyes in surprise if he had known a
tiger had drunk the milk, and if he had seen Tamba doing it? Perhaps it
is just as well he did not.
But Tamba never knew what a sad trick he had played on the store-keeper.
The tame tiger slunk along, coming nearer and nearer to the smell of the
salt water, and at last he came to the river itself. It really was a
river of salt water, and ran down to the big ocean. But the river was
not like those in the jungle. It had no banks of green vines, mud, and
trees. Instead, all along the river were big houses built on piers with
the water in between, and it was to one of these docks that Tamba slunk
down in the darkness.
Tied at the docks were big ships which would soon steam down the river
and cross the ocean. Tamba knew what ships were. He had come across the
ocean in one when he was brought away from the jungle.
“I think I have found the place I want at last,” said Tamba to himself,
as he walked slowly along a pier. “It is the place of the salt water
where I landed when I first came to this country. Now I have only to go
back the other way and I’ll be at my jungle. And how glad I shall be!
Now I will find a good place to hide until morning, and then I’ll see
what is best to do. I am tired now, but I had a good drink of milk and
I can sleep.”
So Tamba found a quiet hiding place on the ship dock and went to sleep.