Joe Strong turned over in his berth in the circus sleeping car. Something had awakened him from a sound sleep. At first he was not aware what it was, but as his brain cleared he realized that it was some sound of confusion outside the car.

“Where are we?” he asked, for he saw Tonzo Lascalla, his trapeze partner, peering from between the curtains of his berth across the aisle.

“I think we are in,” was the answer, meaning that the circus train had reached its destination. “We are on the siding, but it isn’t time to get up yet, thank goodness.”

“Yes, let us sleep,” begged a yawning voice. “Keep still, can’t you?”

“Sounds as if something had happened,” commented Joe. He looked out of the window of his berth, but it was too dark yet to see more than a confused jumble of black shapes moving about. Joe saw another train on the track alongside of the sleeping cars. It was a train of “flats,” on which the animal cages were carried.

“Look out now! There he goes! Get after him, some of you men!” a voice ordered.

There was a crash of breaking wood, more shouts and the noise of a cracking whip.

“Or maybe shots!” exclaimed Joe, half aloud. “I wonder if any of the wild animals have escaped.”

A moment later, however, there was the sound of laughter.

“Whoop!” a man yelled. “Here he comes at us! Look out! There, he’s got Bill down!”

There were excited yells, and a voice, presumably Bill’s, was heard to exclaim:

“Get off my leg, you big brute! Wow! If you step on me again I’ll be as flat as a board seat! Here, somebody take him off me!”

There was a stir inside the sleeping car, for most of the occupants were now awake.

“For the love of Mike!” grumbled Tom Jefferson, the strong man. “Can’t they let a person get his sleep? Are they giving a private rehearsal out there, or what’s going on?”

“I guess some of the animals are loose,” said Joe, “though it doesn’t seem to be serious.”

More shouts, mingled with laughter, seemed to testify to this view of it.

“I’m going out to see what it is,” decided Joe. He looked off toward the east. A faint glow there told that dawn was beginning to break, though it was still very dark. “I’ve had enough sleep,” Joe reasoned, “and I can’t get any more with all that racket going on under my car window.”

He quickly dressed and went out, he alone of those in his car caring to see what the trouble was. The rest of the circus men preferred to turn over for a possible “forty winks” more.

As Joe was making his way toward the place where he could see a crowd of men about some central object, he heard a voice calling to him from one of the windows of the sleeping car occupied by the women of the circus troupe.

“What has happened?” some one asked. “Is it a wreck?”

“No, nothing as bad as that, I guess, Helen,” Joe replied, recognizing the tones of the pretty trick rider. “Some of the animals seem to be out. I’m going to see.”

“Come back and tell me about it. I hope it isn’t one of the cats.”

“So do I,” Joe said. “But I don’t believe it is. I’ll let you know.”

Circus folk and animal men in general speak of lions, tigers and other beasts of the feline tribe as “cats,” and elephants, camels, horses and their like are known in show parlance as “hay animals,” because hay is their principal fodder.

Joe hurried on to the crowd gathered about one of the flat cars.

“Look out! He’s loose again!” came the yell, and Joe saw the crowd part, and a big ungainly animal come charging through.

“It’s the hippopotamus!” cried Joe. “The big brute is loose!”

The big animal, the “blood-sweating behemoth of Holy Writ,” as it is sometimes called on the circus bills, was out of his tank wagon, and seemed to enjoy his liberty.

“Look out there!” some one in the crowd yelled to Joe. “If he stamps on you there won’t be anything left of you.”

“I guess that’ll be true enough,” thought Joe. For the hippopotamus weighed nearly two tons, being one of the largest specimens in captivity.

On came the big beast, now and then opening its huge mouth, as Joe could see in the light that was beginning to break. Some of the crowd of men came rushing after the hippopotamus with ropes, but the animal moved faster than one would suppose a creature of his bulk could travel.

“Stop him! Stop him, somebody!” came a voice. “If he gets on the track an engine may hit him!”

That, Joe knew, would be a serious loss. For the animal was valuable, having cost the Sampson Brothers four thousand dollars originally, and his value had increased. Joe remembered hearing that Jumbo, the big elephant, many years ago, had been struck by an engine and killed, his skeleton now being in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

“Get him! Get him!” begged the head animal man.

“I wish I could!” thought Joe.

As he moved to get out of the way of the beast the young acrobat stumbled over a coil of rope which had been used to let some of the heavy wagons down the gangplank off the flat cars.

“If I could only lasso him with the rope it might stop him,” thought Joe. “But I don’t know how to manage a lasso, even if I could tie a noose in this rope. And I don’t see how one lassoes a hippo anyhow. However, here goes! I’ll do the best I can. Maybe I can tangle his feet up in the kinks of the rope so he’ll fall.”

Joe caught up the rope, and, without trying to straighten out the coils, threw it at the big animal, which was opposite him, Joe having leaped to one side. And he did by accident what the circus men had for some time been trying to do by design. He threw coils of the rope about the short legs of the “river horse” and down went the hippopotamus with a thud.

“That’s the stuff! Good work!” cried the animal’s keeper. “Quick now, boys! Rope him!”

Before the beast could get up he was pounced upon by a crowd of the animal men and securely bound with ropes.

“Whew!” exclaimed the keeper, as he faced Joe in the now gray dawn of the morning, “that was some work!”

“How did he get loose?” Joe asked.

“The bottom dropped out of his wagon. Must have been rotten. He dropped with it and started off on his own hook. He walked all over a lot of us while we were trying to corner him.”

“Walked on us! Say, he danced a jig on my stomach!” complained Bill Dudley, one of the animal men, as he came limping up. “Have you got him safe?”

“Yes,” replied the keeper.

“Well, don’t let him get loose again. He almost made a pancake of me!”

The circus men now led the subdued beast to temporary quarters until his own cage could be repaired, and the work of unloading the rest of the circus was proceeded with.

“Is it all right?” Helen asked Joe, as he walked back to his car.

“Yes. The excitement is all over. It was the hippo,” and he told what had taken place.

“And you caught him?” asked Helen.

“Oh, it was just luck,” said Joe modestly. “I didn’t take any chances, you may be sure.”

“Maybe he thought you were a friend of his, because you work in a tank, too,” laughed Helen, for the wagon in which the hippopotamus was kept was in two parts, one end being a tank for water.

“Maybe,” agreed Joe. And at that laughing speech there came to mind a matter he knew must be settled. What would be done about Benny’s tank act? The question would come up that day.

Breakfast was served to the circus folk in the big tent, which had been put up in advance. The earliest arrivals at the circus ground are the tent men, the cooks with their big stoves on heavy wagons, and the animals. So that when the performers get up they generally find a hot breakfast ready for them.

After the meal Joe strolled across the lot, watching the men at work. Some of them were gathered about the wagon containing the glass tank in which Benny, the “human fish,” had done his act.

“You needn’t open that,” said Jim Tracy, who was already around, looking after his many duties. “We won’t set up the tank.”

“Why not?” asked one of the men.

“Because Benny isn’t with us any more. We’ll have to cut out the fish act.”

Joe Strong heard this, and came to a sudden decision ­and yet not so sudden, either, for he had given it considerable thought.

“Look here, Mr. Tracy,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ll have to give up the tank act after all.”

“Why not?”

“Well, can’t I do it well enough?”

“Oh, it isn’t a question of that, Joe. You sure did make a hit with it. But I thought you’d rather keep at your trapeze work.”

“So I would ­for a while at any rate. But why can’t I do part of the trapeze act, and the rest of my stunts in the tank? I like it. I’m sure I can do better the more practice I have. I’ll make you that offer ­to do the tank act and as much of my trapeze work as I have time for. What do you say?”

“Why, I guess I’ll say ‘yes,’” replied the ring-master. “I only thought you were doing it to fill in at our opening engagement; to prevent the public’s howling, Joe. But if you want to keep on with it, why, I’m willing, and thankful too.”

“All right, I’ll do it!” decided Joe.

“Good! Unpack the tank, boys!” cried Jim Tracy. “Set her up and fill her with water. We’ll have a ‘boy fish’ act after all!”