Hugh Lofting - Doctor Dolittle's Circus

At last Higgins, and the watchman were fished out of their bathtub, and highly performed with kerosene and fish, they joined the hunt.

The watchman and every one was sure that Sophie must be somewhere near—which was quite true: the tent, under the skirt of which she was lying, was only thirty feet from her stand. But the gate by which she was to pass out was also quite near.

While Jip was wondering when the men would move away so he could let her go, Higgins cried out that he had found a track in the soft earth. Then a dozen lanterns were brought forward, and the men started to follow the trail that Sophie had left behind on the way to her hiding place.

Luckily, with so many feet crossing and recrossing the same part of the enclosure the flipper marks were not easy to make out. Nevertheless, even with Matthew doing his best to lead them off on a wrong scent, the trackers steadily moved in the right direction— toward the tent where poor Sophie, the devoted wife, lay in hiding with a beating heart.

John Dolittle, waiting impatiently in his little passage, had heard the noise of shouting from the circus. He knew that meant Sophie had got out from her stand. But as minute after minute went by and still she did not come to the meeting place the Doctor's uneasiness increased a hundred–fold.

But his anxiety was no worse than Jip's. Closer and closer the trackers came toward the spot where he had hidden the seal. The poor dog was in despair.

However, he had forgotten Too–Too the mathematician. From his lookout on the menagerie roof, away off on the far side of the enclosure, the little owl was still surveying the battlefield with a general's eye. He was only waiting till he was sure that all the circus folk had left their beds to join the hunt and that there were no more to come. When he played his master stroke of strategy he did not want any extra interference from unexpected quarters.

Suddenly he flew down to a ventilator in the menagerie wall and hooted softly. Instantly there began within the most terrible pandemonium that was ever heard. The lion roared, the opossum shrieked, the yak bellowed, the hyena howled, the elephant trumpeted and stamped his floor into kindling wood. It was the grand climax to the animals' conspiracy.

On the other side of the enclosure the trackers and hunters stood still and listened.

"What in thunder's that?" asked Blossom.

"He stamped his floor into kindling wood"

"Coming from the menagerie, ain't it?" said one of the men. "Sounds like the elephant's broke loose."

"I know," said another: "it's Sophie. She's got into the menagerie and scared the elephant."

"That's it," said Blossom. "Lord, and us huntin' for 'er over here! To the menagerie!" And he grabbed up a lantern and started to run.

"To the menagerie!" yelled the crowd. And in a moment, to Jip's delight, they were all gone, rushing away to the other side of the enclosure.

All but one. Matthew Mugg, hanging back, pretending to do up his shoelace, saw Jip flash across to a small tent and disappear under the skirt.

"Now," said Jip. "Run, Sophie!—Swim! Fly! Anything! Get out of the gate!"

Hopping and flopping, Sophie covered the ground as best she could while Jip yelped to her to hurry and Matthew held the gate open. At last the seal waddled out onto the road and the Cat's–Meat–Man saw her cross it and disappear into the passage alongside the deserted house. He closed the gate again, and stamped out her tracks at the foot of it. Then he leaned against it mopping his brow.

"Holy smoke!" he sighed. "And I told the Doctor I done worse things than help a seal escape! If I ever―—"

A knock sounded on the gate at his back. With shaking hands he opened it once more; and there stood a policeman, his little bull's–eye lantern shining at his belt. Matthew's heart almost stopped beating. He had no love for policemen.

"I ain't done nothing!" he began. "I―—"

"What's all the row about?" asked the constable. "You've got the whole town woke up. Lion broke loose or something?"

Matthew heaved a sigh of relief.

"No," he said. "Just a little trouble with the elephant. Got his leg caught in a rope and pulled a tent over. We 'ave 'im straightened out now. Nothing to worry about."

"Oh, it that all?" said the policeman. "Folks was going around asking if the end of the world was come. Good night!"

"Good night, constable!" Matthew closed the gate for the third time ―"And give my love to all the little constables," he added under his breath as he set off for the menagerie.

And so at last John Dolittle, waiting, anxious and impatient, in the dark passage, alongside the empty house, heard to his delight the sound of a peculiar footstep. A flipper–step, it should more properly be called; for the noise of Sophie traveling over a brick slapping the ground with a wet rag and a sack of potatoes being yanked along a floor.

"Is that you, Sophie?" he whispered.

"Yes," said the seal, hitching herself forward to where the Doctor stood.

"Thank goodness! What in the world kept you so long?"

"Oh, there was some mix–up with the gates," said Sophie. "But hadn't we better be getting out of the town? It doesn't seem to me very safe here."

"There's no chance of that for the present," said the Doctor. "The noise they made in the circus has woken everybody. We dare not try and get through the streets now. I just saw a policeman pass across the end of the passage there—luckily for us, just after you popped into it."

"But then what are we going to do?"

"We'll have to stay here for the present. It would be madness to try and run for it now."

"Well, but suppose they come searching in here. We couldn't―—"

At that moment two persons with lanterns stopped at the end of the passage, talked a moment and moved away.

"Quite so," whispered the Doctor. "This isn't safe either. We must find a better place."

Now, on the side o this alleyway there was a high stone wall and on the other a high brick wall. The brick wall enclosed the back garden belonging to the deserted house.

"If we could only get into that old empty house," murmured the Doctor. "We'd be safe to stay there as long as we wished—till this excitement among the townsfolk dies down. Can you think of any way you could get over that wall?"

The seal measured the height with her eye.

"Eight feet," she murmured—"I could do it with a ladder. I've been trained to walk up ladders. I do it in the circus, you know. Perhaps ―—"

"Sh!" whispered the Doctor. "There's the policeman's bull's–eye again. Ah, thank goodness, he's passed on! Listen, there's just a chance I may find an orchard ladder in the garden. Now you wait here, lie flat, and wait till I come back."

Then John Dolittle, a very active man in spite of his round figure, drew back and took a running jump at the wall. His fingers caught the top of it; he hauled himself up, threw one leg over and dropped lightly down into a flower–bed on the other side. At the bottom of the garden he saw in the moonlight what he guessed to be a tool–shed. Slipping up to the door, he opened it and went in.

Inside his groping hands touched and rattled some empty flower pots. But he could find no ladder. He found a grass–mower, a lawn–roller, rakes and tools of every kind, but no ladder. And there seemed little hope of finding one in the dark. So he carefully closed the door, hung his coat over the dirty little cobwebby window, in order that no light should be seen from the outside, and struck a match.

And there, sure enough, hanging against the wall right above his head, was an orchard ladder just the right length. In a moment he had blown out the match, opened the door and was marching down the garden with the ladder on his shoulder.