a veteran clown, pretending to play a
game of ball all by himself.

Joe ran over to Bill and whispered in his ear:

"Quick, Bill! Benny's got a cramp in the tank! We've got to get him out
in a hurry. Come on with me!"

CHAPTER II

JOE FILLS IN

For a moment Bill Watson looked as though he did not understand what
Joe said to him.

"It's Ben--in the tank--something wrong," whispered Joe.

"I get you!" said Bill quickly. He dropped the big stick he was
pretending to use as a bat, and hurried with Joe to the big glass tank.
As yet no one else seemed to have noticed anything wrong with the
"human fish." Other acts were going on around him, and the crowd,
watching through the glass sides of the tank, appeared to take it all
as a matter of course. Ben was still under water, but he was doing
nothing save swimming about slowly--altogether too slowly, Joe thought,
for it indicated that whatever ailed the "human fish" was increasing in
intensity.

"What's the matter?" asked Jim Tracy of Joe, as the young acrobat and
Bill hurried across the tent. "Why aren't you two going on with your
acts?"

Jim Tracy was head ring-master and one of the owners of the circus.

"Ben's in some kind of a fit," answered Joe. "We've got to get him out
of the tank."

"Whew! Great Scott!" exclaimed the ring-master in a low voice. "Can we
do it without starting a panic?"

"We've got to," said Joe fiercely. "If the audience knows that he's
nearly drowned----"

"They mustn't know," agreed Tracy. "Come on."

They fairly ran toward the glass tank. By now Ben had settled down on
the bottom, an inert form. He had been unable to hold his breath under
the water, and it was filling his lungs. Joe Strong thought quickly.

He might dive into the tank and pull Benny out, for Joe had more than
once on a hot day cooled off in the water in which the "human fish" did
his act. But if Joe did that now it would let the people know something
was wrong.

"But we've _got_ to get Benny up!" Joe reasoned.

He saw, lying near the tank, one of the elephant goads--"ankus" is the
Indian name for the instrument. It is shaped like a boat-hook, but is
sharper.

Joe quickly caught this up. Jumping to the platform, on which the tank
stood, Joe whispered to Bill Watson and Jim Tracy to stand as near him
as possible.

"We can sort of screen our movements that way," he said.

Reaching the hook down into the water, Joe caught it in a portion of
Benny's "f