THE MAKING OF A WILD BEAST
The transformation begun in Finn by the night he had spent in a
rocking train, caged between a tiger and two bears, was enormously
accentuated and confirmed by his encounter with the Professor. If
zoologists had deliberately set themselves the task of converting
an Irish Wolfhound into a wild beast, they could hardly have taken
any more effective measures than those which had been adopted by
pure chance with Finn, from the time at which he reached Sam's
hands; and it is probable that no zoologist with any humanity in
him would have made progress so extraordinarily rapid. The mere
fact of being caged behind iron bars for the first time in his
life, and that between a roaring, snarling tiger and two grunting
little bears, strongly odoriferous of the wild, affected Finn in
somewhat the same manner that a highly excitable and nervous man of
quite untrained intellect might be affected by being flung into a
cell, surrounded by raving maniacs. If such a man, after a dozen
hours in his cell, were approached by some one whom he had every
reason to regard as a friend and a rescuer, and beaten cruelly with
a weapon possessed of strange and altogether horrible
qualities--supernatural qualities, so far as he could tell--it is
fair to suppose that he would be as much transformed by the ordeal
as Finn was by his ordeal.
Shortly after the episode of the red-hot iron, Finn's cage was
again visited by Sam and the Professor, the former being laden with
a big, blood-stained basket. From this basket the Professor took a
large chunk of raw flesh, and pushed it through the bars into
Finn's cage. A bone was also thrust through the bars, and a fixed
iron pan near the gate was filled from outside with water. The
Professor eyed Finn curiously while he performed these operations,
and was surprised that the Giant Wolf, as they called him, did not
spring forward upon the food.
"I've put the fear of God into him all right, Sam," said the
Professor. "He's not going to touch his grub while we're here. Like
all wolves, he's mighty frightened of traps; and I guess he reckons
there's a trap attaching to this meat. Watch how Killer tackles
his."
Killer was already ravening furiously at the bars of his cage, his
yellow eyes ablaze as he watched the meat his soul desired being
thrust into Finn's cage. The tiger's roars kept Finn's hackles up,
and his fangs bared in a fierce snarl; so that the Professor was
struck afresh with the savageness of the latest addition to the
menagerie under his care. Killer's meat barely reached the floor of
his cage before he had snatched and carried it to the rear, where
he tore it savagely, while maintaining an incessant growling snarl.
But he dropped the meat as though it burned, and crouched fearfully
in the opposite corner of his den, when--by way of display for
Sam's benefit--the Professor picked up his iron bar and threatened
the tiger with it. Now Finn, on the other hand, when he saw the
cruel bar raised, sprang forward with a growling roar of defiance,
fore-feet outstretched, bristling back curved for the leap, and
white fangs flashing.
"Too sulky to eat it, but mighty concerned when he thought I was
goin' to take his meat from him," commented the Professor, in
explanation to Sam. As a matter of fact, Finn had not thought of
the meat. His present feeling was that he had fallen among a lot of
mad wild beasts, some of whom, by curious chance, had the
appearance of men folk. If one among them should lift an iron bar,
and more especially if the maddest and most hated among them, the
Professor, should lift the bar, why then, as Finn saw it, his one
chance for life was to fight; to strike hard and swiftly.
"We'll have to keep these two always caged together," said the
Professor, with a careless glance at Finn and the tiger. "Old
Killer works him up in great style. I guess he'll fetch the public
all the time, while he can hear old Killer at his antics. He
certainly is the finest-lookin' beast I ever saw in the wolf line,
and he's as strong and heavy as a horse. I guess your number would
'ave been up for sure, Sam, if you'd been in my shoes a while back,
when he got me down. What I don't like about the beggar is you
can't reckon on him; he don't seem to have the same ways as most of
'em. He don't fly at ye right away; he doesn't even jump for his
grub, you see. He seems to lie back an' consider. It's a bad thing
that, for he's hefty enough, anyway, without stopping to think out
his wickedness like a man. He's goin' to be a rough, hard case to
tame, Sam, that Giant Wolf of yours; but he's come to a hard-case
tamer, too, and don't you forget it. He's got to bend or break, and
you can gamble clear down to the butt of your sack on that, my son.
Come on now, and I'll show you how the others are fed. Just fill
old Killer's water-dish first."
It was now thirty hours since Finn had tasted food, and three days
since he had eaten a proper meal. If his experiences of the past
four-and-twenty hours had been in every other respect distressing,
they had at least robbed him of grief about the Master. His
outraged physical senses, and the tremendous strain placed upon his
nervous system, effectually shut grief out from his mind. Finn was
accustomed to have meals served to him in spotless enamelled
dishes, and it had always been food of which a man might have
partaken: well-cooked meats, bread, vegetables, and gravy, nicely
cut and mixed. Now for a long time the condition of passionate
protest and irritability produced in him by all that he had gone
through, and by Killer's continuous growling, prevented his
touching the meat which lay near the bars of his cage. But hunger
triumphed after a while, and with a quick, rather furtive movement,
but with lips drawn back and every sign exposed of readiness to
defend his action, Finn lifted the big chunk of meat from its place
by the bars, and carried it into a corner at the back of the cage,
where he tore it into fragments, and ate it, of necessity, very
much as a wolf eats, the blood of the raw meat trickling meanwhile
about his jaws. To drink, Finn had to place his head close to those
bars which most nearly adjoined the front of the tiger's cage. But
drink was necessary to him now, and so, with his nose all furrowed,
his fangs bared, and a formidable low snarl issuing from his
throat, he slowly approached the water-pan, and lapped his fill,
pausing to snarl aloud at the tiger between each three or four laps
of his tongue. But Killer had fed full, and crunched his bone to
splinters and eaten that; so now he was preparing himself to sleep.
If Finn could have followed Killer's example and slept it would
have helped him immensely, for his overwrought system needed rest
more badly than anything else just then. But this was impossible as
yet for the sensitive Wolfhound. The two bears in the next cage
were playing together fubsily, and the tiger's breathing while he
slept was a maddening kind of cross between a purr and a snore;
maddening, that is, to one who found the creature's mere proximity
incredibly distasteful. This hatred of the Killer's neighbourhood
was no whim, no personal fastidiousness on Finn's part. It went
much deeper than that. For example, so far, the hair on Finn's back
would not assume its natural position; it still stood half erect,
and harsh and stiff as fine wire; by which the tension of his
nerves may be imagined. No, Finn could not sleep.
The hours of the day dragged slowly by, and Finn began to suffer in
new ways. He had never been confined for any length of time before,
and strict cleanliness was an instinct with him.
At length, as the hot afternoon drew to its close, a number of men
came to the cages, and horses were hitched on to the heavy wagon
which supported them, at a level of less than three feet from the
ground. Killer woke with a start and, with his tail, angrily
flogged the partition which divided him from Finn, while delivering
himself of a snarling yawn. Finn leapt to his feet, answering the
tiger's snarl viciously, himself looking to the full as savage as
any of the wild kindred. The wagon moved with a jerk, Killer rolled
against his side of the partition and growled ferociously; Finn
sprang at the partition as though he thought his great weight would
carry him through it, and his jaws snapped at the air as he sprang.
The men roared with laughter at him, and this accentuated his
feeling that they were all mad wild beasts together. Presently,
Finn's cage, with others, was ranged along the side of a
canvas-covered passage way by which the public were to approach the
main tent, where that night's performance was to be given. This
double row of cages was arranged here with a view to impressing the
public; a kind of foretaste of the glories they were to behold
within. The Southern Cross circus had patent turnstiles fixed at
both ends of the main tent, those at one end admitting only of
ingress, those at the other end admitting only of egress.
It was shortly after this that Finn became conscious of a curious
grinding small sound at the back of his cage. Presently a sharp,
bright point of steel entered the cage from behind, just above the
level of Finn's head, as he sat on his haunches. The steel wormed
its way into the cage to a length of fully six inches, and then it
reached the side of Killer's cage, pointing diagonally, and bored
slowly through that. The auger was well greased, and made only a
very slight sound, so slight indeed that Killer was not aware of
it. He was not so highly strung as Finn at this time.
This auger-hole was an idea of Sam's, for which he hoped to derive
credit from the boss. He had noted carefully the remark of the
Professor about keeping the Giant Wolf close to the tiger, in order
to lend additional fierceness to his demeanour. And so, with the
thoughtlessly cruel cunning of a schoolboy, he had devised a means
of improving upon this. He took a thin iron rod, and covered the
end of it with soft, porous sacking, which he moistened with the
blood of raw meat. Then, by thrusting this between the bars of
Finn's cage, and jabbing violently at the Wolfhound with it for
several minutes, he endeavoured to impregnate the sacking on the
rod with a smell of Finn. Then he invited John L. Rutherford to
take up a stand in front of the cages, as though he were a member
of the general public, and to whistle, by way of signalling that he
was ready. Directly Sam heard the whistle, he being now behind the
cages, he thrust his sacking-covered rod through the auger-hole he
had made from Finn's cage into the tiger's, and there rattled it to
and fro to attract the Killer's attention. Killer not only heard
and saw the intruding object, but smelt it, and sprang at it
violently, with a rasping, savage snarl which challenged the Giant
Wolf to come forward or be for ever accursed for a coward. The rod
was withdrawn on the instant, and Finn's whole great bulk crashed
against the partition, as he answered Killer with a roar of
defiance. The great Wolfhound stood erect on his hind-feet,
snapping at the air with foaming jaws, and tearing impotently at
the iron-sheathed partition with his powerful claws. The boss
applauded vigorously, and gave Sam a shilling for beer.
"You keep that up while the people are coming in, Sam, an' by gosh
we'll have 'em in fits. The Giant's a sure star performer, every
time. He's worth two or three of the Killer, when he prances round
on his tail that way. It was quite a bright notion o' yours, Sam,
that auger-hole."
It must have been nearly two hours later, when the public was being
admitted in a regular stream to the big tent, and Sam had succeeded
in working the tiger and the Wolfhound into a perfect frenzy of
impotent rage, of snarling, foaming, roaring fury, that a faint
odour crossed Finn's nostrils, and a faint sound fell upon his
ears, through all the din and tumult of the conflict with his
unseen enemy. In that moment, and as though he had been shot, Finn
dropped from his erect position, and bounded to the front bars of
his cage, with a sudden, appealing whine, very unlike the
formidable cries with which he had been rending the pent air of his
prison for the last quarter of an hour. He had heard a few words
spoken in a woman's voice, and those words were:--
"I cannot bear to look at them; I never do. Let us hurry straight
in."
In a passion of anxiety, and grief, and love, and remorse for not
having been on the look out, Finn poured out his very soul in a
succession of long-drawn whines, plaintive and insistent as a
'cello's wailings, while his powerful fore-paws tugged and
scratched ineffectually at the solid iron bars of his cage. The
woman whose voice he heard was the Mistress of the Kennels, and the
man to whom she spoke, who walked beside her, looking obstinately
at her and not at the cages, was the Master. Something seemed to
crack in poor Finn's breast, as the two humans whom he loved
disappeared from his view within the great tent. He did not know
that they would not pass that way again, because the audience left
the place by the opposite end of the tent. But he gave no thought
to the future. Here, in the midst of his uttermost misery and
humiliation, the Master, the light of his life, had passed within a
few feet of him, and passed without a glance, without a word. For
long, Finn gazed miserably out between the bars, sniffing
hopelessly at the air through which his friends had passed. Then,
slowly, he retired to the furthermost corner of his cage, and
curled down there, with his muzzle between his paws, and big drops
of bitter sadness trickling out from beneath his overhanging brows.
And not all the ferocity of Killer, nor all the ingenuity of Sam
with his sacking-covered rod, availed to draw Finn from his corner
again that night. It seemed as though his heart had cracked, and
every other emotion than grief trickled out from it in the form of
tears. It was the saddest moment of Finn's life till then; and it
was a bitter kind of sadness, too. Not one little look; not one
glance for Finn in the midst of his torment!
[Illustration]