Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/468



HOSE who go to sea with the circus and have wild beasts for company certainly enjoy a novel and interesting experience. And the novelty begins at once, with the loading of the ship.

When I was notified to be on board the "Massachusetts," of the Atlantic Transport Line, at the foot of Houston Street, at seven o'clock in the morning, to make the trip to London with a great circus, I had every reason to suppose that the ship would sail with the morning tide. But I found the pier and vicinity still littered with red vans, wagon gear, baggage, horses, elephants, and other circus bric-à-brac and menagerie paraphernalia. The loading had been going on for two days. Yet the great Chapman derrick still floated alongside, and heavy red cages, covered with protecting canvas, were dangling in the air, or being ranged on deck. The little elephants had gaily trotted over the gang-plank, holding by each other's tails in the most comical manner, and were already safely installed below; but the big fellows, each in a stout cage of iron-bound planking, had to be swung over by means of the derrick, and lashed securely fore and aft. Horses were being led in by the hundred. The great forty-horse team that had thrilled millions of people in the street parades during the summer, was marched to a quarter of its own; and the seventy Kentucky thoroughbreds that appear in a single act in the ring were still more particularly housed.

All day the members of the circus company gather and huddle about the decks, and saunter up and down the dock, bidding friends good-by so many times that both