That evening’s big performance had just finished. He’d put his head in the lion’s mouth and it had gone brilliantly. The crowd were amazed. At first there was a lot of clapping when the lion sat down and growled. Normal people didn’t often get to see lions and so they were excited, but then when, at Captain Fox-Dingle’s command, the lion leant forward and opened his mouth as wide as it would go the audience hushed down a bit. To a careful ear the noise they made was a bit confused. They were thinking ‘this isn’t much of a trick’ and were wondering what was going to happen next. And then Fizzlebert stepped into the lion’s cage. Some people shouted out warnings, because it’s well known that lions and children shouldn’t mix; some women fainted simply because they imagined what gruesome scene might happen next; and a small boy wet himself, with uncontrollable excitement. By the time Fizzlebert knelt down beside the lion’s vast open mouth and placed his head inside it, the audience had fallen as quiet as a brick wrapped in cotton wool sat on a table in a sound-proof booth with all the lights out.
