nobody knew where to go, or how to find their way out.  The people crowded first on one side, and then on the other, as their fears instigated them.  I was very soon jammed up with my back against the bars of one of the cages, and feeling some beast lay hold of me behind, made a desperate effort, and succeeded in climbing up to the cage above, not however without losing the seat of my trousers, which the laughing hyaena would not let go.  I hardly knew where I was when I climbed up; but I knew the birds were mostly stationed above.  However, that I might not have the front of my trousers torn as well as the behind, as soon as I gained my footing I turned round, with my back to the bars of the cage; but I had not been there a minute, before I was attacked by something which digged into me like a pickaxe, and as the hyaena had torn my clothes, I had no defence against it.  To turn round would have been worse still; so after having received above a dozen stabs, I contrived by degrees to shift my position, until I was opposite to another cage, but not until the pelican, for it was that brute, had drawn as much blood from me as would have fed his young for a week.  I was surmising what danger I should next encounter, when to my joy I discovered that I had gained the open door from which the lioness had escaped.  I crawled in, and pulled the door too after me, thinking myself very fortunate; and there I sat very quietly in a corner during the remainder of the noise and confusion.  I had not been there but a few minutes, when the beef-eaters, as they were called, who played the music outside, came in with torches and loaded muskets.  The sight which presented itself was truly shocking; twenty or thirty men, women, and children, lay on the ground, and I thought at first the lioness had killed them all, but they were only in fits, or had been trampled down by the crowd.  No one was seriously hurt.  As for the lioness, she was not to be found; and as soon as it was ascertained that she had escaped, there was as much terror and scampering away outside, as there had been in the menagerie.  It appeared afterwards, that the animal had been as much frightened as we had been, and had secreted himself under one of the wagons.  It was sometime before she could be found.  At last O’Brien who was a very brave fellow, went a-head of the beef-eaters, and saw her eyes glaring.  They borrowed a net or two from the carts which had brought calves to the fair, and threw them over her.  When she was fairly entangled, they dragged her by the tail into the menagerie.  All this while I had remained very quietly in the den, but when I perceived that its lawful owner had come back again to retake possession, I thought it was time to come out; so I called to my messmates, who with O’Brien were assisting the beef-eaters.  They had not discovered me, and laughed very much when they saw where I was.  One of the midshipmen shot the bolt of the door, so that I could not jump out, and then stirred me up with a long pole.  At last