Chapter V: Our Friends, the Elephants

Personality, as has been remarked before, has its part in the animal kingdom, just as with the human family. The hyena is a sneak, an animal tramp, ready to seize upon that which the richer have left behind; a filthy vagrant, ostracized even among his own co-occupants of the animal kingdom. The lion is a sluggard, a poser, a sort of motion-picture actor among animals, perhaps a bit big-headed because his looks have given him the title of the king of beasts. The leopard is a cat, just as a mean, vicious-tongued gossip is a cat; both wait for the psychological moment to strike, fawning and docile and even friendly until that moment shall come. Of course, the leopard is dumb. It therefore strikes with its teeth, instead of by words. The tiger is pugnacious, even as a man who knows his strength is pugnacious; place one tiger and three lions in the same arena, and the tiger will come forth bloody, but alive. The lions will stay behind, dead. The chimpanzee, the Koolakamba, the marmoset and others of the monkey and ape breeds are buffoons. The rhinoceros is a sulking dunce. Throughout the whole list, each has his one element of personality, his one characteristic of echoed human nature which stands forth and identifies him,—all but the elephant. And he has everything!

You don’t like tigers, do you? Or hyenas? Or lions? You wouldn’t care to make a pet of a rhinoceros, or have a giraffe running his neck over the transom of the kitchen door when the grass in the back yard had become too short for cropping? But haven’t you said more than once, as you stood in front of the picket line, punching forth peanuts, that “you just loved elephants?” If you haven’t, you’re different from ninety-nine per cent. of the persons who attend a circus. The reason all lies in that one fact of personality.

For the personality of an elephant is everything that is contained in the personality of a magnetic human being. He is a buffoon,—yet he can be a tragedian. He is a child, yet an age-old sage; an ardent lover, still as ardent a hater; strong-minded, but possessing weaknesses; stolid, and at the same time shrewd with a shrewdness one might believe impossible in a beast; honest, yet a thief; faithful, but tricky as a coquette; a clown with a serious mind; and a wrecker, with the heart of a saint.

It’s a long list. Yet I’ve seen every phase of it exemplified in elephants, even to the extent of temperament! Of course, that sounds impossible; only opera stars and long-haired poets and motion-picture stars are temperamental. Very well then, consider this:

On a certain circus to which I happened to be attached for several years were Kas and Mo, twin baby elephants, and named respectively for Kansas and Missouri. They were young; naturally the training which usually is given elephants in the compounds of India, or the European Zoölogical gardens before shipment to America, had been missing, and the two youngsters were forced to receive their education as the circus trouped along through the summer months, or waited away the snowy weeks in winter quarters until the sun shone again. One day, after they had been with the circus several seasons, I happened to notice them in the winter quarters yard, where they had been picketed for an hour or two of sunshine.

No one was near. No one was giving orders. Yet those elephants were acting in the same manner as I had seen them perform that morning in the practise ring. They raised their feet in unison, they knelt in unison, they trumpeted in unison and did the “hootchie-kootchie” together. An accident? Not at all. They simply were practising their act, even as a human performer would practise. And they were in earnest! A moment later, Kas floundered in the midst of a number and stopped, with his attention on something far more important than acting: a wisp of hay, dropped by an animal man as he passed. His trunk went forth to grasp the food greedily, while Mo, intent upon his practise, continued his work. But a second later came a squeal, a grunt, a whirling trunk which caught Kas just back of the ears and sent him reeling dizzily. He recovered; and the fight was on, while “bull men”, or elephant keepers, tumbled out of the animal house, while hooks sought flesh and the two squealing, angry elephants were parted. At last came peace and the head bull tender grinned as he passed.

“Got in a scrap over their act,” he explained. “Worse’n a ham song an’ dance team. But they’ll make up. Watch ’em.”

I watched the two hulking beasts; they were six feet tall, in spite of their “babyhood.” For fully five minutes neither knew that the other was on earth; each sulking, each looking in the opposite direction, each appearing to be thinking up uncomplimentary remarks about the other. Then gradually the air cleared. Fifteen minutes later, they were back on the job once more, again going through the new number of their act,—and without a trainer in sight. If that isn’t temperament!

Of course, as has been mentioned before, it is sure death to give tobacco to an elephant. He’ll remember you for years and years, and a few more years after that, and then, when you finally show up, proceed to commit murder. It sounds logical.

But Kas and Mo are two of the best little tobacco chewers I know. If you’ll feed them tobacco, they’ll remember it,—and stick out their trunks for more. All for the reason that they like it, just as nearly every other elephant likes it, for the licorice and sugar it contains. The tobacco itself may be bitter, if it is chewed long enough, as is the case with the human family. But the elephant differs. He gets only the taste of the licorice and sugar and syrup as it goes down. And he wants more!

For an elephant’s appetite is his most childish trait. In age he may be at the possible time of discretion which should attend the passage of some hundred years of growth; but in appetite, he still is a kid of the all day sucker stage. That’s why he likes peanuts, simply because while his leathery brow may be wrinkled and old, his stomach is blessed with eternal youth. Give him hay, and he will look upon you as a friend. Give him sugar cane, lollypops, marshmallows, peanuts, popcorn, chew-w-w-wi-n-g gum an’ candy and he will love you like a flock of brothers. And watermelon! If there is an elephant heaven, it consists of watermelons everywhere, and not a guard in sight!

Everything goes down—just so it is sweet and gummy and of the type that the small boy crams into his face on the way home from school. Perhaps that is why there is such an affinity between the urchin and the elephant. Also, there is another trait which might indicate that the elephant, no matter what its age, is perpetually in a stage of second childhood. It gets the colic!

“It rarely fails,” said Henry Boucher, an elephant trainer one night in Chicago, as he strove to rescue old one hundred and twenty-five year “Mamma” from an onslaught of colic. “Get ’em in these big towns where the crowds are heavy, and where there’s plenty of time for the bunch to stand in front of the elephant line, and sure as shootin’, one of the blamed fools will show up with the colic! When it comes to sweet stuff, they ain’t got as much sense as a two-year-old kid. Look at that blamed old fool, now! Swelled up like a poisoned pup! And she’s the head of the herd and supposed to have some brains!”

But Mamma was beyond the stage where she could be insulted or reproached. Her piglike eyes were bulging, while her stomach was bulging even more. Within that stomach was a conglomeration of peanuts, candy, chewing gum, popcorn, gumdrops, hay, apples, bananas and whatever else in the line of sweets had come her way; Mamma had refused nothing, and now she was paying the penalty. Yet, as Boucher had said, she was the head of the herd, the most sagacious, most thoughtful old elephant of the whole thirty-ton bunch. That means a great deal.

Many a time I had seen Old Mamma stop the procession from the train to the circus lot, that she might test the strength of a bridge before allowing her herd to venture upon it. Carefully, slowly, one ponderous forefoot raised, she would take every possible precaution before allowing her weight to come upon the span, easing her tremendous bulk upon the structure with a shrewd conception of avoirdupois that was almost human. Nor did she move until she was certain that there came no creak of weakness, no crackle of bending timbers. Then, just as slowly, the other foot came forward,—and gradually she moved upon the bridge, while the whole herd waited for her signal that all was safe.

Once, too, I was on the circus when two lions broke loose. The elephants became panicky; they milled and circled, breaking from their picket pins, and lunging wildly in their attempts at escape.

A shrill, trumpeting blast from Mamma and they ceased their excitement. They waited, even as a well-trained military company awaits the command of a superior, while their leader went to the side-wall, raised it with her trunk, and signaled them to come on. One by one, hurrying, it is true, but orderly, they went into the open, to be corralled by the wily old commander, trotted across the lot to safety, and held there until the animal men could cease capturing the lions long enough to cajole the elephants back to the menagerie tent.

Again have I seen her with an obstreperous “rogue” chained to her side, and seemingly aware of what it all meant. Only one thing will hold down an elephant when it is “going bad.” That is work, work and more work. Give Mamma that “rogue” in time, and her percentage of failures would be few. Hour after hour would she work him, leading him to the rear of wagons, pretending herself to push, but shunting all the labor upon him, until, from sheer fatigue, he was ready to go back to the picket line and be a good boy.

Yet this was the beast which lay on the ground in Chicago, bulging like an overgrown balloon, squealing her pain, wiggling her trunk, rolling her piglike eyes, and waiting until the attendants should arrive with the whisky, Jamaica ginger and paregoric!

Which, one would say, was a childish thing. True, and there are many other traits about an elephant that are equally paradoxical. We once had an elephant whose regular, accepted job was to save the show. His occupation in circus life was the same as that of some strong-shouldered, slow-thinking day laborer whose mind never was above his task, and who was paid for his muscles and not his brains. When rain came, it was Barney for whom the lot superintendent yelped, that the big, hulking elephant might place his gigantic forehead against the rear end of a wagon and succeed in removing it from the mire after twenty and even thirty horses, hook-roped to every available part of the vehicle, had failed. He helped to unload the show in the brisk, keen air of early morning, shunting the wagons into position for the draft teams after the pull-up horses had brought them to the runs; and more than once, when a switch engine wasn’t handy, I’ve seen old Barney hitched to a freight car or two, to drag them out of the way when they projected too far upon the team tracks, thus making the turning of the six and eight and ten-horse teams a difficult matter as they hooked up for the trip to the show lot. After all this was done, the bosses magnanimously would allow him to be attached to a string of three or four wagons, the “clean-up” of unloading, that he might drag them to the circus grounds, clustered with every workman who desired a free ride.

After this came the work of the show lot itself. Barney carried “quarter poles” for the canvas men of the big top. He moved the property wagons here, there and the other place, and “spotted” them conveniently for the work of the performance. When the heavy, three-ton tractor became stuck in the mud, it was old Barney who yanked it back to solid earth. When night came, he got the wagons off the lot, then, the cry of “mule-up!” echoing from his keeper, shambled to the glaring lights of the circus train that he might assist in the loading. From dawn until midnight, the constant cry was for Barney, with only one bit of respite. That was when he accompanied the rest of the herd into the ring for their performance.

Not that Barney did the various tricks which had been taught the others. Far from it. The good old beast always had been too busy for such things. But there was one stunt which had come upon him naturally, which seemed to carry for him all the amusement and joy and recompense necessary for his life of hard work, and that was the fact that he did the hootchie-kootchie!

No one, about the show at least, had taught him. No one knew that he possessed the “art” of the Egyptian dance until one day when the side show happened to be backed up against the menagerie tent in such a way that the squealing music which accompanied the contortions of “La Belle Fatima” sounded directly behind the elephant picket line. As soon as that music began surprised “bull-men” saw a peculiar glint come into Barney’s eyes. His head began to sway, and his trunk curled high in the air with delight. Then ponderously, one hind foot was raised and swung far across the other, to be swept back again and planted on the earth while the other rear hoof was jerked up into a comical sweep. It was an elephantine interpretation of the “kootch”, danced with a verve and spirit which few elephants possess, in spite of the fact that they seem to take a delight in it—a “kootch” with a bit of a shimmy thrown in for good measure—and laughing bull-tenders sought the menagerie superintendent to tell him of Barney’s newest accomplishment.

Whether or not it was self-taught remains a mystery. For ten years Barney had been a working elephant, nothing else. His duties were too manifold to allow him the vacation of the parade; even in winter quarters he was hauling hay or dragging the wagons about while the other elephants practised their acts. He had been a working elephant long before he came, to the show; if ever he had been trained, that time had been at least fifteen or twenty years in the past. Yet as long as that music lasted, just so long did Barney perform his imitation of the dances of the streets of Cairo. And the next day, Barney went into performance!

That was his sole stunt for a long time. He needed no cue. When the music played, he danced. That was all there was to it. And how he danced! Finally the head bull-man got an idea, and working with Barney on bright days, or when the jobs about the lot were slack, taught him to blow a huge mouth organ, so that he could furnish his own music. However, there was only one difficulty. Barney wouldn’t stop playing!

He had an ear for music, that elephant! True, the only notes he could play consisted of the general conglomeration as he blew through the harp, then sucked in the air again, but it seemed to be enough for Barney. Then came a night in the mud, when the poor old elephant was squealing with fright as he sank to his belly in the mire, yet struggled faithfully on at his task of rescue, where the men and tractors and horses had failed.

The work was grueling. It was almost cruel. Not that Barney protested, not that he sought to quit,—but simply through the horrible strain of self-inflicted punishment as the big beast went from one task to another, willingly, gladly, his muscles straining, the huge veins standing forth about his ears like knotted cords. The lot superintendent drew a muddy hand across his forehead.

“Wish we could let him rest!” came whole-heartedly, “but there ain’t a chance. If he don’t work—we don’t get off this lot!”

The bull-tender frowned. He scratched his head. Then suddenly he grinned and hurried away.

“Got an idea,” he announced, over his shoulder. “Maybe it’ll cheer him up.”

He was gone a moment, only to slosh back through the mud, carrying a bulky object which he held forth toward the tired, faithful, old elephant.

“Here, Barney,” he said, “make a little music for yourself as you go along.”

It was the mouth harp. The elephant trumpeted, then projected his trunk. A moment more and he was working harder than ever, the big harp curled in his proboscis, and the exhaust of his tremendous lungs bringing from it strange, sonorous discords. But Barney liked them, which was all that was necessary. When dawn came and the last of the wagons was trundled off the lot, they led Barney to the elephant cars, trotting placidly and serenely,—still blowing on his harp. After that, the instrument became a regular accompaniment. I have seen, more than once, in the gray light of dawn, a tremendous hulk of an elephant pushing circus wagons about as they came from the steel runways of the flat cars, a big mouth-harp curled in his trunk, playing his own particular style of music as he worked!

But to return to Mamma and her colic and the paregoric. Sounds foolish, doesn’t it—paregoric for an elephant? Or Jamaica ginger, or whiskey? Yet it is a fact that paregoric is carried by the gallon with more than one circus, merely to cure colic in elephants. The same once was true of whiskey—with the exception of the fact that it came by the barrel. Of course, that was in the days before the Eighteenth Amendment,—an amendment, by the way, which once, at least, brought its complications in the elephant world. And all because of the fact that Jerry, a seventy-year-old kid, was a toper.

At the same time, Jerry had two other afflictions. One was the fact that he was a chronic addictee of the colic. The other was that he hated the hippopotamus.

When a circus is in winter quarters, a certain amount of laxity is allowed among the animals. There is not the danger of panics, or squeamish visitors, and more than once I have seen a two-year-old lion, known to be harmless to the circus workmen, wandering about, perfectly free and perfectly at peace with the world, being shunted out of the way should he amble into the blacksmith shop, and often kicked, as a big dog would be kicked, when he decided to make his bed on the piles of canvas where the “sailors” were repairing various bits of tenting for the summer. So it was perfectly natural that Jerry, who was somewhat of a clown, should not be constantly picketed with the rest of the elephants in their big cemented space at the end of the menagerie house. The result was that Jerry spent most of his time at the hippopotamus tank.

It was a rough life that he led for the hippo, which, you must understand, is not the really fierce, open-mouthed thing that you see on the circus billboards in the act of swallowing several boatloads of scrambling Africans, but a slothful, slow-thinking water hog, with no thought other than the warmth of his tank and a sufficiency of hay from one day to the next.

Just why Jerry disliked him isn’t known. Perhaps it started in mere playfulness. Perhaps too, it began at some far distant time, back in the dim days of ancestry, for such things happen in the animal kingdom. I once saw a young chimpanzee become hysterical with fright when it was forced, for press-agent picture purposes, to pose on the back of a stuffed baby elephant! The chimpanzee couldn’t forget,—and this in spite of the fact that the baby elephant had been an object of taxidermy for more than five years! Therefore, there is no need to seek the reason for Jerry’s dislike. It simply existed.

All day long he would stand beside the high, steel grating which surrounded the hippopotamus tank, waiting for the big river hog to raise his head from the water. The minute that happened, the elephant’s trunk would shoot forth as sinuously as a snake, and with a smacking blow descend upon the pop-eyed, flat head of the hippo. There was little force to the assault; it would correspond to a human slap, more than the striking of a fist. Yet it was enough to worry that poor old hippopotamus into a state of almost constant submersion. Hour after hour Jerry would await his chance, while the hippopotamus would sulk beneath water, his nostrils barely visible at a far and safe end of the tank. Then would come a moment of forgetfulness,—but never for Jerry. His trunk always was ready. The moment that hippo came into view, out went that stinging, smacking slap, and the poor, persecuted old hip would seek the depths again. Month after month it continued, then Jerry contracted one of his usual attacks of colic.

Rather, faked it, for that was one of Jerry’s best little tricks. He liked the remedy—whiskey—and knew that there was but one way to obtain it. It’s comparatively easy to tell when a human being is a malingerer, but with an animal it is different, and Jerry had all the fine points of the colic well rehearsed. His belly would distend, his eyes pop, and his squeals and grunts become piteous, with the result that the animal men, rather than take the chance of neglecting an elephant which really was ill, would pour a couple of quarts of whiskey or Jamaica ginger down him, mark it up on the expense account, and go back to their other work. Either suited Jerry, for each contained alcohol, and that was all he desired. A short time after the administration of the dose, he again would be on his feet, a bit bleary-eyed and immensely pleased with the world, mildly intoxicated, and too happy even to bother his pet enemy, the hippopotamus. But this time conditions were different.

In the first place, Jerry hadn’t tasted a good drink for a long while. With the coming of prohibition, the usual barrels of whisky had vanished. Jamaica ginger also had become scarcer, owing to an increase in cost. The last few attempts at illness on the part of the elephant had been met by concoctions that were bad-tasting, red-peppery and containing but a small amount of alcohol, incidentally of but small aid in curing elephantine colic. The stomach of an elephant seems built for alcohol; it will respond quicker to whisky than any other remedy.

The result was that the head animal man had prevailed upon the police department to transfer to him, for elephant medicinal purposes, a small barrel of moonshine which had been captured in a raid and contained more of living fire than alcohol. And it was about this time that Jerry keeled over.

The high-proof remedy was brought forth and poured down him. Jerry gulped, and continued to be ill. They tried it again, and Jerry got another drink. Evidently his pachydermic mind was working fast: drinks had been few and far between, and he intended to get as many as possible while the supply lasted. Twice more they poured the concoction down him. Then Jerry rose.

But it was a different Jerry. His eyes had a far-away look. There was a sort of wavering gait to his lumbering walk, and an angular curl to his trunk which denoted that his sense of direction was a bit awry. For a few moments he trundled about the menagerie house, sniffing at the hay, scratching his back against the heavy posts, and squealing delightedly. Then his blinking eyes fastened upon the bulky form of the hippopotamus, just coming out of his tank for an airing.

A trumpet blast, and Jerry loped across the menagerie house. He leaned against the iron grating—and went through. A half hour later, when sweating animal men, with ropes, chains, other elephants and bull-hooks dragged Jerry away, the hippopotamus tank was a wreck, the hip himself had broken away, rampaged through a double door and was shivering in the snow of the outside yard, while the whole animal house had gone wild. Here and there through the cat cages, sporadic fights were breaking forth. The monkeys were squealing and shrilling with fright. The ostriches were holding pugilistic contests; the sacred cattle were milling and horning, and trouble was everywhere. Let one fight start in a menagerie, and they all get the fever. Jerry had started his fight,—and finished it; the poor old hippopotamus was a mass of bruises, cuts and trunk marks, while Jerry, bellowing and leering, strove his best to break away and finish the job. With a larger elephant chained to each side of him, they dragged him to the picket line and imprisoned him there, nor was he ever again allowed the freedom of the animal house. What is more, Jerry now belongs to the temperance forces,—by request. And his attacks of colic have become far fewer, for now he receives only one half of one per cent. remedies.

Surprising that an elephant should get drunk and then attack his worst enemy? Not at all. I have seen them do far more surprising things, and things which would indicate that the scientist who says that an animal cannot reason never studied elephants. When a three-ton beast can display the fact that he knows he is committing theft, that he must choose his time for criminality and then, the deed accomplished, cover up his trail so that no incriminating evidence be left behind, something beyond mere accident must be responsible. It sounds impossible, yet it happened on the Ferrari Wild Animal show some years ago,—and the “criminal” was an elephant.

There is only one time of the day when the menagerie tent of a circus is deserted, and that is the hour shortly before opening time, when, after everything has been made in readiness for the reception of the afternoon crowds, the menagerie and candy force hurries to the cook-house for the noonday meal. It was upon the return from this one day that a complaint came from the menagerie candy stand. Some one had stolen a barrel of lemonade!

“Anybody let them elephants loose?” the menagerie superintendent asked, as the report was made to him. But no one had. The picket line then was examined. Every elephant was in place, every chain safely about the stake in a half-hitch. Suspicion then turned to canvas men and “roughnecks”, who might have sneaked into the tent, stolen the contents of the barrel, and carried the “juice” away for sale at reduced prices to the purveyors at outside “snack stands”, those inevitable booths which are set up about every circus by the townspeople. But investigation along this line also resulted in failure. And the next day the contents of another barrel disappeared!

Now was the time for action, and a guard was set during the noon hour. Nothing happened! The next day, the guard remained, and for four days after that. The lemonade continued to repose undisturbed in the barrel. Then, believing that the danger had passed, the guard was removed,—with the result that the refreshments disappeared once more, lemons, sugar and all! This time Bill Rice, one of the managers of the show, and now a circus owner himself, decided to stand guard, but not in the open.

Hidden behind the side wall, he took his place when the rest of the menagerie crew departed and began his vigil. For a long time there was not a movement, not an indication that the mystery of the disappearing lemonade would be solved. Suddenly, however, his attention centered upon a peculiar clanking noise which emanated from the elephant line. There, one of the largest of the herd was working at his chain with his trunk, raising and lowering the loose end of the chain, drawing it forward, throwing it back; stopping to look about him in fear of discovery, then hurrying to his work again. A moment more, and the elephant stepped forth free, then, picking up the loose chain, so that it would not betray him by its noise in dragging, he hurried to the lemonade barrel, deposited the chain gently on the ground, drank the lemonade, ate the lemons, scooped up what remaining sugar had become deposited on the bottom of the barrel, and the job finished, once more raised the chain and returned to his post in line. There Rice saw the thing which made him gasp. For that elephant had curled the chain in his trunk, and with a single deft movement had placed the “half-hitch” upon the stake again! And even a human must take a lesson or two before he becomes an adept in the “half-hitch!”

This is the sort of thing which gives a circus man a feeling of almost reverence for elephants. Once in the circus business, once aware of the strange things that the beasts will do, nothing seems impossible for them. Perhaps the circus man gives them credit for too much brain power. And perhaps, on the other hand, even he underestimates them. For there are things which are not easily explained.

I have known an elephant to kill his trainer while in a rage, and then later mourn for him, displaying all the remorse, all the evidences of conscience that could possibly be shown by a human murderer. I have known elephants to work with their worst enemies in performance, to exert every possible effort to “put on a good show”, to be friendly and even helpful with those enemies in the ring,—yet once outside the big top, to refuse utterly to abide them. A dog, for instance, is an object of dislike to an elephant, but he will go into performance with one and appear absolutely satisfied. But let that dog come within his range while he stands in the picket line!

I once saw the execution of a “killer” elephant, while visiting a small show in South Dakota. For twenty-four hours, ever since the murder, the brute had been a prisoner in the big elephant car, surly and sulky and defiant. Yet when the show management ordered a switch engine to each end of the car, when the beast’s hind legs were being fastened to heavy, hempen ropes, leading through the opening of the rear end of the car to one switch engine, and a steel-cable noose, attached to the other engine, was being fashioned for his neck, that beast ceased his angry trumpeting and sullen grumbling. Instead, a piteous note came into his call. He curled his trunk in, and when they beat it away with their bull-hooks, he sank to his knees and begged! What was the explanation? Why should that elephant have ceased his defiance, to become friendly, even piteously supplicating as they prepared for his death? A circus man will tell you he knew that his time had come, and knew he was begging—and begging in vain—that they spare his life! I still can hear the cries of that elephant as the noose was placed about his neck and the signal given to the engineers to tighten the ropes; it was like the cry of a soul in terror! To a circus man it is explainable. That elephant knew. Some innate sense of right and wrong told him that he had committed a crime and that he was to be punished. But here is a happening which even a circus man will not attempt to explain, for it goes into something deeper, something more subtle even than intuition:

Last year, on a western circus, Snyder, the biggest elephant of the herd, went bad. The story of his killing has been told and retold, for it was a dramatic affair which included even the wrecking of a menagerie. But there is one angle which has not been touched upon:

Snyder’s whole venom that day had been centered upon another member of the herd, Floto, whose sole offense, it seemed, was that he was the most docile of the herd. Hard-working animal men had kept them apart by a bulwark of elephants; to attack Floto, Snyder first must attack in turn Mamma, and Frieda and Alice, all nearly as large as he, all capable of giving him a good fight, and not one afraid. Snyder seemed to understand. A few sallies, a few rebuffs in the shape of swift-lashing trunks, and he confined himself to attempts to sneak around the end of the herd, or to catch Floto at a moment when he was unguarded. But this was impossible. Then came the time of execution.

The rifles were ready. Fingers were at the triggers. But humanity on the part of the animal men demanded that first the swiftness of poison be attempted. The heart was cut from an apple, and the space crammed with cyanide of potassium, enough, in fact, to kill several elephants. Then, cajoling and tempting him with the fruit, the superintendent went as near the mad beast as possible and tossed him the poison-laden sphere. Snyder stepped forward eagerly; he had not been fed for twenty-four hours. He stretched his trunk to raise the fruit, sniffed at it, stopped, and drew away. Then with a sudden movement, he grasped it again, and whirling, tossed it over the backs of the protecting herd, straight in front of the hated Floto. Only the swiftness of an animal man, who darted under the elephants and seized the apple before the greedy, slothful pachyderm in the rear could grasp it, saved the show from the loss of a second and innocent brute.

How did Snyder learn in that brief second of sniffing that the red, alluring apple was in reality a thing of death? And did he seize the chance to accomplish through strategy what he could not achieve by physical force?

You may answer the question yourself!