CHUNKY FALLS OVERBOARD
The storm was a very hard one, and it tossed the ship, large as she
was, up and down and sidewise. Sometimes it seemed as if the steamer
would go entirely down under the water, and again it seemed as if
she would be tossed up to the angry clouds that blew along so fast
overhead. The wind blew the rain so hard that the water drops sounded
like hail stones.
“What shall we do about those hippos?” asked the animal man of the
captain. “They are in the big tank, and that may slide overboard. It is
so big you can not very well make it fast.”
“That is so,” answered the captain, who was wet through with the rain.
“We had better lift the hippos out in their small cages. Those we can
fasten to the deck more easily.”
So, though it rained and it blew, and the ship pitched and tossed, the
sailors went to lift from the tank the small cages of the three hippos.
First they hoisted up, with long ropes, the cage which Short Tooth
occupied. This hippo had not heard much of the storm, for he had stuck
his head under water. But as soon as he was lifted out and felt the
wind blowing across the deck, he knew there was great danger.
“Oh, I wouldn’t like to be in the ocean now!” thought Short Tooth, as
he saw the big waves, almost as high as the masts of the ship.
“Nor I,” added Gimpy, as he, in his cage, was lifted out of the tank.
“I’d be afraid.”
Then it came the turn of Chunky to be lifted out. The sailors fastened
ropes to the top of his cage, and began to pull on them to raise him
out of the tank. All the while the ship was pitching and tossing,
sometimes almost going in under the big waves that sloshed around on
deck near the tank in which the hippos had been living. Some of the
bigger animal cages had been put below the deck to keep them from being
washed away.
All of a sudden, just as Chunky’s cage was being lifted out, the ship
was struck by a very big wave――the largest yet. At the same time the
wind blew very hard and the rain came down twice as bad as before.
“The rope is slipping!” cried one of the sailors, who was helping lift
Chunky out of the tank. “The hippo’s ropes are slipping!”
“Hold them――don’t let him go overboard!” yelled the animal man.
But one of the sailors must have gotten some rain in his eyes, or else
the ship went too deep into the water. How it happened, I can’t exactly
say, but the next instant the big water tank, in which Chunky and his
two friends had been kept for a while, slid off the deck into the ocean.
At the same time a big wave struck the sailors who had hold of the
ropes on Chunky’s cage. They let go, and down the cage crashed to the
deck, with Chunky in it.
“Ugh!” grunted Chunky as he came down with a thump. “Ugh! This is no
fun!”
And it was even less fun when the cage broke, just as another big wave
came on deck. The first thing Chunky knew, he was out of his cage in
which he had been kept ever since he was taken from the jungle pit. Out
of the broken cage rolled Chunky, turning over and over on the slanting
deck like a queer football rolling down a cellar door. The cage went
one way and Chunky another.
“Look! Look!” shouted some of the sailors, but they could hardly be
heard, for the storm was making so much noise. “Look! The happy hippo
is out of his cage!”
And so Chunky was. I think it was nice of the sailors, even if they
were all excited in the storm, to call Chunky the “happy hippo,” for if
ever there was one, he was.
[Illustration: “Splash! That was Chunky himself falling overboard”]
“Get him!” yelled the animal man! “Get that hippo! He’s the best of the
three, and I want him for a circus! Get Chunky!”
But this was more easily said than done. The deck of the ship, pitched
and tossed as it was in the storm, now looked like the slanting roof
of a house. Anything that was not fast to it would roll off. The other
hippo cages had been made fast. But Chunky’s, out of which he had been
tossed when it fell and broke, now began to slide down the wooden deck
toward the water. And Chunky himself, not being able to stand on the
slippery deck, began to slide too. Right toward the ocean slid the
hippo, not as happy now as he had been in the jungle.
“Splash!”
That was Chunky’s broken cage falling into the water off the deck of
the ship.
“Look out that Chunky doesn’t fall in!” cried the captain.
Some of the sailors, with ropes in their hands, made a rush, intending
to tie Chunky fast to the deck. But they were too late.
“Splash!”
That was Chunky himself falling overboard. Right into the salty ocean
he fell, off the deck of the ship, and then the ship steamed on,
leaving the hippo and his floating cage on the big ocean. For the ship
had to steam on, or else the big waves would have made her sink.
As for Chunky, as soon as he found himself tossed into the water, he
did what he had been taught to do by his mother and father when he was
a little baby hippo. He closed his nose and mouth so he would not choke
in the water. Fresh water or salt water, did not matter to Chunky. As
soon as he jumped in, fell in, or was pushed in, shut went his nose and
mouth!
Down, down, down in the ocean sank Chunky. He thought it safest to
sink down quite a way at first, until he saw what would happen next.
Besides, down under the waves it was quieter than on top, where they
were being tossed about by the wind.
Hippos can dive, sink, float or swim as they please, almost like a big
fish, but they can not stay under water more than about ten minutes
without breathing. After ten minutes they have to come up to fill their
lungs with air. Then they can dive again.
So Chunky dived down in the ocean. He did not know how deep it really
was, and at first had an idea he might go to the bottom and perhaps
find some grass or lily roots there.
But the ocean was not like his jungle river, as he very soon found. It
was much deeper, and there did not seem, at least, in the part where he
was, to be any grass or other roots.
“I guess I’d better not sink any deeper,” thought Chunky, after a bit.
“I can’t find any place on which to stand. I’ll go up and get some air.
I need it.”
So he swam toward the top, and when he stuck his head out of the water,
to take a breath and to look around, he could see nothing except big
waves, ever so much bigger than any he had seen in his river.
“Well, now that I am off that floating house, and out of my cage, now
that I can do as I please,” thought Chunky to himself, as he swam along
with just his nose and eyes out of water, “I guess I’ll go on shore and
back to my jungle. I’m free now, and I won’t go to the circus. I’ll go
back home.”
Ah, Chunky little knew all that was going to happen to him, and the
adventures he was to have!