CHUNKY ON A SHIP
Standing up in the cage made of jungle vines, Chunky, the happy
hippo――happy even though he had been caught and taken away from
home――listened, hoping to hear the trumpeting of his friend, Tum Tum,
the jolly elephant. But no such sound came. Instead, the black men
shouted more loudly than before, and began dancing.
“What is it all about?” asked Chunky of some monkeys who had been
caught a few days before. “Why are the men shouting?”
“I think it’s because they can see the ocean from the top of the hill,”
returned one monkey. “I can smell the salt air. I remember it; for
once, years ago, a troop of monkeys of which I was one, came down to
the seashore. It smells now just as it did then.”
“But why should the black men be glad to get to the ocean?” asked
Chunky.
“I can tell you why,” growled the lion. “It means they have come safely
through the jungle with us animals, and do not have to march and carry
us any more. I know, for I heard a lion friend of my father’s tell
about it. He was caught and carried through the jungle to the sea,
ready to be put on a big floating house and sent across the ocean. But
he got away and ran back into the jungle.
“And now they are going to take _us_ away. I’m not going! I’m going to
break out of my cage!” and once more the lion roared and tried to break
loose, but he could not.
“Quiet! Quiet!” said the white hunter in a gentle voice, but the lion
roared, and would not be still.
“You are very silly,” said Chunky. “You can’t get out, and you may as
well make the best of it. Being in a circus may not be so bad. Tum Tum
liked it.”
“But I am not Tum Tum!” roared the lion, and he would not be quiet
until they gave him a lot of meat. When he chewed on that he could not
very well roar.
It was the sight of the ocean that had made the black men shout so
joyfully, and soon Chunky, in his cage, was carried down to a spot from
which he could see what, at first, he thought was a big river. But it
was the sea, not a river.
“I think we’ll give the hippos a bath,” said the head white hunter
to his men, though the animals, of course, did not know what he was
saying. “The hippos like lots of water,” went on the man, “and they
haven’t had a chance to get a good soaking since we caught them. Take
their cages down to the ocean and dip them in, but don’t let the
animals out.”
Chunky, Short Tooth and Gimpy did not know what was going to happen
to them when they found themselves being lifted up again and carried
forward. But they soon found out.
Long ropes were fastened to their cages, and they were dipped right
down into the salty ocean. This was the first time Chunky or any of the
other hippos had been in salt water, for the rivers where they lived
in the jungle were of fresh water, though it was muddy. But salt water
or fresh is all the same to a hippo, except for taking a drink. They
like to swim in one as well as in the other, and often, when the jungle
where the hippos live is near the sea, they spend all day in the ocean,
near shore and travel inland at night to feed.
So, though it was the first time Chunky had had a salt bath, he and his
two friends liked it. In their cages they sank away down on the sandy
bottom of the ocean near the shore, closing their nose holes, so as not
to swallow any of the briny water.
Short Tooth thought he could break out of his cage while he was in it
under water, and he tried, but it was of no use. The black men knew
how to make cages strong enough to hold even a young hippo.
“Ah ha! Now I feel fine!” cried Chunky, as they raised his cage out of
the ocean, and he puffed and blew out the air from his nose, which he
had kept closed under water. “I feel just dandy!”
Of course Chunky didn’t use the word “dandy,” but he used one in animal
talk which means the same thing, only it would be too hard for you to
pronounce if I put it in here.
“What makes you so happy?” asked one of the monkeys, who sat in
his cage near the shore, really shivering, though the day was
warm――shivering as he saw how the hippos liked the cool water.
“I am happy because I hope I am going to be in a circus,” said Chunky.
“Well, I’m not!” growled the lion; “though I am feeling a little better
since they fed me.”
“Chunky is always happy,” said Gimpy. “He has been jolly ever since
I’ve known him.”
“Yes, so he has,” added Short Tooth, as he stood up to let the water
drip off him.
“Well, why shouldn’t I be?” asked Chunky. “It’s true I’ve been taken
away from the river I liked so well, away from the jungle, away from
my father and mother, away from Mumpy, my sister, and Bumpy, my funny
brother. But what of that? I’d have had to leave them some day, anyhow,
and why not now? Besides, I am going to be in a circus, and I may meet
Mappo, the merry monkey.”
“I wish I could be jolly, like you,” said one of the monkeys.
“Well, just think what fun you may be going to have, and not about the
trouble you’re in now, and you’ll be happy,” said the hippo, and he
opened his mouth as wide as he could.
The black hunters, who were just then bringing up great quantities of
grass for the hippos to eat, thought Chunky was opening his mouth to
take a big bite of the food, but, instead, he was smiling because he
felt so jolly. It’s hard to tell, sometimes, when a hippo is laughing,
or when he is smiling, or when he just opens his mouth to eat, but once
you learn to know the difference, you’ll never make a mistake. Chunky
was smiling.
None of the other wild animals that had been caught in the jungle and
brought to the sea, felt as happy as Chunky did, though the other two
hippos were pretty jolly. Having a bath in the sea and getting sweet
grass to eat made them that way, I guess.
And now began a busy time, for all the animal cages――in some of
which were lions, big apes, snakes, monkeys, and deer with big
horns, besides the hippos――had to be hoisted up into the ship, or the
“floating house,” as some of the jungle beasts called it. In this ship
the animals would be carried across the ocean from Africa to America,
where they were to be put on exhibition in circuses or in zoological
parks or in menageries.
Of course Chunky and his friends knew nothing of this. They did not
even know what a circus was, though Chunky had heard Tum Tum talk about
one, and about books and adventures.
“I shall be very glad to get to a circus, I think, and off this
floating house, or whatever it is,” thought Chunky, when the ship had
started. Chunky was in his cage up on deck, as were his two hippo
friends and some of the larger animals. The others were under the deck,
in the hold of the ship.
“I don’t like this at all,” Chunky said to the other hippos. “It’s too
swishy-swashy like!”
He meant the ship was rolling to and fro, and pitching and tossing up
and down with the waves, for it was soon out of sight of land, and
going far away from Africa and the jungle.
Though Chunky and his friends were used to being tossed about in the
river, when they played tag and other water games, this motion of the
ship was different. It made some of the animals seasick, and the lion,
especially, was quite sad and miserable. He grumbled and growled, but
he was too sick to roar, and Chunky, too, did not feel as well as when
he had been carried through the jungle in the vine cage.
“Still, I suppose I might be worse,” thought the hippo. “I might have
nothing to eat or be chased by a crocodile,” and he sort of looked down
cross-eyed at his nose, which was scarred by the teeth of the crocodile
that had bit Chunky.
Indeed Chunky and the other animals had all they wanted to eat, and
were kindly treated, for the men who had bought them from the black
hunters wanted the animals to be well and strong when they were taken
off the ship. So Chunky, Short Tooth, Gimpy and all the rest were well
treated, though of course they were not allowed to go around loose.
On and on steamed the big ship with its load of animals. There was
nothing much Chunky could do except eat and sleep and drink water. He
wanted a bath, but there seemed to be no way of giving him one.
However, one day, as an animal man passed along the deck and looked
in at the hippos, he saw that their skin was very dry and that it was
getting hard and cracking open.
“That will never do!” he said to the captain. “We must fix it so the
hippos can have a bath.”
“How can we?” asked another animal man.
“Very easily,” put in the captain. “I’ll get a big wooden tank up on
deck. We can pump it full of sea water from a hose and let the hippos
have a bath in it.”
“That will be just the thing for them!” said the animal man. “Get a
tank for the hippos.”
The sailors soon made one, for I guess sailors can do almost anything.
On deck a big wooden box as large as a room in your house, was set, and
water was pumped into this. It was salt water from the ocean in which
the ship was steaming along, but the hippos liked salt water to wash in
as well as fresh, as I have told you.
“Now we’re all ready,” said the animal man. “We’ll hoist the hippos up,
one at a time in their cages, and dip them into the tank.”
Chunky and the others rather hoped they might be allowed to come out of
their cages and splash around loose in the water tank, but this could
not be. They might have gotten out and run all about the ship, not
knowing any better. So they had to stay in their jungle cages still.
“Oh, but this is fine!” cried Chunky, as he sank down in the water and
let it soak into his hard, dry skin. “This is fine!”
“Just what we wanted!” said Short Tooth.
“Couldn’t be better!” gurgled Gimpy, as he let the water come up over
his back.
“How happy those hippos seem,” said a giraffe. He had stuck his head
out of a hole in the deck, for he was down below, though he could look
out, as he was very tall and had a long neck.
“Yes, they are happy,” said the lion. “Especially the one they call
Chunky. I never saw such a jolly chap. He thinks he’s going to have
lots of fun in a circus; but wait until he sees how it is! Then he
won’t open his big mouth and smile any more.”
The hippos liked the tank so much that the animal man said they could
stay in it during the rest of the voyage. It was not so deep but what
they could put their heads out to breathe, and this just suited Chunky
and the others.
One day, when they had been steaming over the ocean a long while, the
sun went under some clouds and it became very dark, though it was not
night. The sailors ran here and there about the ship, making everything
fast.
“We are going to have a bad storm!” cried the captain. “I hope none of
the animals will get loose.”
“We must take the hippos out of the tank, and tie their cages fast on
deck,” said the animal man. But, before that could be done, the storm
came and the ship was in the midst of wind and rain.