Suddenly the electric lights were switched on from the engine room, and the place blazed up with incandescent lamps. The other Jiggers of the squad joined him, carrying a second line. He staggered ahead with his nozzle and turned the corner of a cage to see Doherty flinging open a barred door to let loose a Barbary lion. As it jumped down, “Shine” caught it behind with the water; and the powerful stream turned it over, rolling on the deck. It scampered off with its tail between its legs, like a wet pup. “Wah!” he screamed, and took Doherty through the empty monkey cage with a split spray that soaked him. Doherty ducked and ran. “There he goes,” “Shine” shouted. “Keep ’m off the ladder.” That deck of the fifth hold was a room about forty feet wide and thirty feet long; but the hatch in the center of it was at least twelve feet square, so that the deck was little more than a gallery, as deep as a stall, running around the open hatchway. As “Shine” drove Doherty and the animals ahead, they had to circle around the hatch to approach the ladder from the other side; and there Moore and the fourth man had already turned the hose on some of the frightened leopards--of which Doherty had released five--and driven them back on him. And Doherty, finding himself between the two attacks, penned in with the animals that retreated on him, ran to a corner where there were several cages of polar bears, threw open the doors of these, prodded the bears out with a pole, and hid himself on top of the farthest cage. Lions and leopards would run from water. Polar bears, he knew, would not. If “Shine” did not know, it was not long before he learned. He and Cripps had come as far as their hose would allow them when the first of the big white beasts, attracted by the splash of water, came shouldering along the passageway with its mouth open, panting. “Shine” raised a vainglorious whoop and put the hose on it. It rose on its hind legs to take the water, and it went over on its back in a deliciously cool bath, pawing at the stream that struck it rather too heavily for play. It rolled over, fighting, and came to all fours with a growl. The water struck into its eyes and into its open jaws; it dodged blindly, biting less playfully; it began to wrestle and roll about, fighting in on the stream. “Gee!” he cried. “This is a garden hose to that brute. Here’s another!”