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Careers of Danger and Daring

<hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>III</h2> <h3>BONAVITA DESCRIBES HIS FIGHT WITH SEVEN LIONS AND GEORGE ARSTINGSTALL TELLS HOW HE CONQUERED A MAD ELEPHANT</h3> <div class='cap'>IN the course of days spent with Mr. Bostock and his menagerie, I observed many little instances of the tamer's affection for his animals. I could see it in the constant fondling of the big cats by Bostock himself, and by Bonavita, his chief tamer, and even by the cage grooms. And no matter how great the crush of business, there was always time for visiting a sick lioness out in the stable, who would never be better, poor thing, but should have all possible comforts for her last days. And late one afternoon I stood by while Bonavita led a powerful, yellow-maned lion into the arena cage and held him, as a mother might hold a suffering child, while the doctor, reaching cautiously through the bars, cut away a growth from the beast's left eye. It is true they used a local anesthetic; but even so, it hurt the lion, and Bonavita's position as he knelt and stroked the big head and spoke soothing words seemed to me as far as possible from secure. Yet it was plain that his only thought was to ease the lion's pain.</div> "I couldn't have done that with all my lions," Bonavita said to me after the operation; "but this one is specially trained. You know he lets me put my head in his mouth." Bonavita is a handsome, slender man, with dark hair and eyes, quite the type of a Spanish gentleman; and I liked him not only for his mastery of twenty-odd lions, but because he had a gentle manner and was modest about his work. According to Mr. Bostock, Bonavita has but two strong affections: one for his old mother, and one for his lions. Occasionally I could get him aside for a talk, and that was a thing worth doing. "People ask me such foolish questions about wild beasts," he said one day. "For instance, they want to know which would win in a fight, a lion or a tiger. I tell them that is like asking which would win in a fight, an Irishman or a Scotchman. It all depends on the particular tiger you have and the particular lion. Animals are just as different as men: some are good, some bad; some you can trust and some you can't trust." "Which is the most dangerous lion you have?" I inquired. "Well," said he, "that's one of those questions I don't know how to answer. If you ask which lion has been the most dangerous so far, I should say Denver, because he tore my right arm one day so badly that they nearly had to cut it off. Still, I think Ingomar is my most dangerous lion, although he hasn't got his teeth in me yet; he's tried, but missed me. It doesn't matter, though, what I think, for it may be one of these lazy, innocent-looking lions that will really kill me. They seem tame as kittens, but you can't tell what's underneath. Suppose I turn my back and one of them springs—why, it's all off." Another day he said: "A man gets more confidence every time he faces an angry lion and comes out all right. Finally he gets so sure of his power that he does strange things. I have seen a lion coming at me and have never moved, and the lion has stopped. I have had a lion strike at me and the blow has just grazed my head, and have stood still, with my whip lifted, and the lion has gone off afraid. One day in the ring a lion caught my left arm in his teeth as I passed between two pedestals. I didn't pull away, but stamped my foot and cried out, 'Baltimore, what do you mean?' The stamp of my foot was the lion's cue to get off the pedestal, and Baltimore loosed his jaws and jumped down. His habit of routine was stronger than his desire to bite me." Again, Bonavita explained that there is some strange virtue in carrying in the left hand a whip which is never used. The tamer strikes with his right-hand whip when it is necessary, but only lifts his left-hand whip and holds it as a menace over the lion. And it is likely, Bonavita thinks, that to strike with that reserve whip would be to dispel the lion's idea that it stands for some mysterious force beyond his daring. "You see, lions aren't very intelligent," said he; "they don't understand what men are or what they want. That is our hardest work—to make a lion understand what we want. As soon as he knows that he is expected to sit on a pedestal he is willing enough to do it, especially if he gets some meat; but it often takes weeks before he finds out what we are driving at. You can see what slow brains lions have, or tigers either, by watching them fight for a stick or a tin cup. They couldn't get more excited over a piece of meat. One of the worst wounds I ever got came from going into a lion's den after an overcoat that he had dragged away from a foolish spectator who was poking it at him." <div class="figleft"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus73.jpg" width-obs="398" height-obs="600" alt="BONAVITA'S FIGHT WITH SEVEN LIONS IN THE RUNWAY." title="" /> BONAVITA'S FIGHT WITH SEVEN LIONS IN THE RUNWAY.</div> I finally got Bonavita to tell me about the time when the lion Denver attacked him. It was during a performance at Indianapolis, in the fall of 1900, and the trouble came at the runway end where the two circular passages from the cages open on an iron bridge that leads to the show-ring. Bonavita had just driven seven lions into this narrow space, and was waiting for the attendants to open the iron-barred door, when Denver sprang at him and set his teeth in his right arm. This stirred the other lions, and they all turned on Bonavita; but, fortunately, only two could reach him for the crush of bodies. Here was a tamer in sorest need, for the weight of the lions kept the iron doors from opening and barred out the rescuers. In the audience was wildest panic, and the building resounded with shouts and screams and the roars of angry lions. Women fainted; men rushed forward brandishing revolvers, but dared not shoot; and for a few moments it seemed as if the tamer was doomed. But Bonavita's steady nerve saved him. As Denver opened his jaws to seize a more vital spot, the tamer drove his whip-handle far down into his red throat, and then, with a cudgel passed in to him, beat the brute back. The other lions followed, and this freed the iron door, which the grooms straightway opened, and in a moment the seven lions were leaping toward the ring as if nothing had happened. And last of the seven came Denver, driven by Bonavita, white-faced and suffering, but the master now, and greeted with cheers and roars of applause. No one realized how badly he was hurt, for his face gave no sign. He bowed to the audience, cracked his whip, and began the act as usual. As he went on he grew weaker, but stuck to it until he had put the lions through four of their tricks, and then he staggered out of the ring into the arms of the doctors, who found him torn with ugly wounds that kept him for weeks in the hospital. That, I think, is an instance of the very finest lion-tamer spirit. Among various meetings with tamers of animals, I recall with particular pleasure one afternoon when my friend Newman brought to see me a tamer famous in his day—George Arstingstall. I knew that Arstingstall was the first man in this country to work lions, tigers, leopards, elephants, sheep, monkeys, and various other beasts all in a great circular cage. Also that his fame had spread across Europe and his daring feats been shown from London to Moscow; but I did not know what a simple, modest man he was, nor realize until then the charm of listening to a couple of circus veterans, comrades for years, talking of the old stirring days. Here were two men getting on to sixty, yet talking with the eagerness of boys about their exploits and perils under fang and claw. It was: "Say, Bill, do you remember when that bull pup caught Topsy by the trunk and stampeded the—" "Stampeded the whole business. Do I remember, George? Up in Boston. Bing! bang! over the Common, and the Old Man wild! Well I guess. But, say, George, that wasn't as bad as the stampede in Troy, when those four elephants cleaned out the rolling-mill. Oh, what a night! Let's see. There was Nan and—" "And Tip." "Yes, poor old Tip. I strangled him at Bridgeport. You remember, George, he wouldn't take the poison. Oh, he was no fool, Tip wasn't, and I told the Old Man we'd have to put nooses on him and cut off his wind." "I know, Bill, the Old Man said it wasn't possible to strangle an elephant—" "And say, George, I had his wind shut off inside of three minutes after the boys began to haul. Oh, you can't beat three sheave-blocks, George, for finishing off a bad tusker. Well, this night in Troy those four elephants went sailing through this rolling-mill, trumpeting like mad, right over the hot iron, scaring those Irishmen blue, and then smashed down a steep refuse bank into the mud. Oh, what looking elephants! Nan had her legs all burned, and—" "I know, and say, Bill, do you remember where I found Tip? Three miles out of Troy, standing up in a corn-field sound asleep, and two little boys on a rail fence looking at him. He'd knocked over a shanty and smashed open a barrel of whisky—a whole barrel, Bill—and there he was sound asleep. When I saw those little boys I made up my mind I'd found Tip. "'What ye lookin' at, little boys?' I sung out. "'El'phunt, mister,' says one of the boys, sort of careless like, just as if it was a common thing in Troy for elephants to be asleep in corn-fields." "I know, that's the way little boys act," remarked Newman, sagaciously. "Say, George, tell about the time you took that car-load of animals over the Alleghanies." After some preliminaries, Mr. Arstingstall responded to the invitation, and I heard a story that Victor Hugo might have turned into a masterpiece of description. It was back in the winter of 1874, and circus trains were not fitted up as completely then as they are to-day. Arstingstall was in charge of a car packed with a medley of animals—lions and tigers in cages, some camels, some boxes of monkeys, some hyenas, a sacred bull from Tibet, and a young male elephant recently brought from Africa and as yet untrained. All these were on their way to Wisconsin, where the show was to make its spring opening in a couple of weeks, during which Arstingstall was expected to break the young elephant for driving in a chariot race. At one end of the car was a stove against the bitter weather, but the elephant was chained at the other end, and as they came into the mountain region Arstingstall noticed that the elephant was suffering from cold, and at the first stop sent a man out for half a bucket of whisky, which he filled up with water and gave to the shivering animal. There is no use giving an elephant whisky unless you give him enough. Now came a run of an hour and a half without stop, and during this time Arstingstall was alone in the animal-car, and about as busy as he ever expects to be on this earth. The trouble began when he unloosed the elephant's chains to lead him nearer the stove, for it looked as if his ears might freeze, as happens. Indeed, an elephant's ears will sometimes freeze so hard that big pieces drop off, while a frozen tail has been known to drop off entirely. Against such chances Arstingstall wished to take precautions, so he led the elephant down the car, through the jumble of animals and cages, all the less prepared for mischief as this was rather a smallish elephant, not over six feet at the shoulder and showing only half-grown tusks. But they were sharp. Whether it was the whisky taking violent effect or some sudden hatred for his keeper—at any rate, that elephant, long before he reached the stove, set forth upon a murderous campaign the like of which Arstingstall had never known. Before he realized the danger, he felt the creature's trunk twisting around his neck, and he was hurled violently to the floor. There he lay helpless, while the elephant hesitated, one might fancy, whether to kneel on him and crush the life out or run him through with his tusks. In that moment's pause Arstingstall made a last despairing effort, did the only thing he could do, sunk his teeth into the fleshy finger that curls around the end of an elephant's trunk and covers the opening so that no invading mouse may enter and work destruction. In all an elephant's great body, there is no spot so sensitive as this finger, and, with a scream of pain, the animal loosed his hold, whereupon Arstingstall sprang behind one of the cages. But the elephant was after him in a moment, swinging his trunk and trumpeting black murder. Arstingstall dodged behind the camels, behind the sacred bull, behind the stove. The elephant followed him everywhere, profiting by his smallness, and where he could not go himself he sent his curling trunk. Arstingstall, out of breath, climbed on top of the lion's cage, thinking to find some respite, but the red-ended trunk pursued him. Once more he tried biting tactics, and as the reaching finger swept along the cage top he seized it again in his teeth, and this time took a piece clean out of it, which was not pleasant for him, and less so for the elephant. Now came a truce of some minutes, during which the elephant put forth screaming challenges, but kept at a distance, and allowed Arstingstall to reach the bunks beside the monkeys' cages. From the topmost bunk opened a trap-door in the car roof, the only exit, as the sliding side-doors were bolted. He might escape here to the back of the train, but that would leave a mad elephant in possession of the car, a thing not to be thought of. Thus far the elephant's rage had been directed solely against his keeper, but, the keeper gone, he might turn to destroying the other animals, might kill the sacred bull, or smash open the lions' cages—there was no telling what he might do. Arstingstall saw that his duty lay in that car. Whatever came, he must— Crash! came the elephant again, and the lower berth was a wreck. And now the din became infernal with the roaring and bellowing and chattering of the other animals. Arstingstall did some quick thinking. There was sure death before him, unless he could somehow conquer this frenzied creature, whose rushes, coming harder and harder, must soon batter down the car, for all its stout oak timbers. Oh, for a weapon, a prod of some sort, a—like a flash the thought came; down at the other end was the pitchfork used for throwing fodder. There was his chance; he must get that pitchfork. For the next hour it was a fight, man against elephant, for the winning and holding of that pitchfork. There was the whole story, and some day I hope to give its details, the moves and counter-moves, the strategy of brute against human, the conflict of brain against crude force. Arstingstall won, but by what patience and quiet nerve he alone knows. Foot by foot, cage by cage, he worked his way down the length of that car, the elephant now on the defensive, one would say, as if he realized what was planning, the man watching, resolute, biding his time, ready for a sudden rush, forced now and again to use his teeth upon that murderous trunk. Finally, he got the pitchfork, and for a moment—what a moment that was!—held four prongs of flashing steel before the elephant's eyes, red-burning, unsubmissive. It was all over now, the battle was won, the animal knew, and stood still awaiting the blow. Down came the weapon, and right through the trunk went those four sharp points, down into the timbers under foot. Then Arstingstall braced the handle under a wall-beam, so that the elephant was nailed fast to the floor, nose down. And then the brute squealed his submission. Three weeks later Arstingstall drove that elephant, perfectly broken, in a chariot race, and for years after there was not a better little bull in the herd than he. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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