THE MAN AMONG THE MONKEYS;
OR,
NINETY DAYS IN APELAND.

THE ADVENTURES OF POLYDORUS MARASQUIN, THE MAN AMONG THE MONKEYS.

BEETON’S BOY’S OWN LIBRARY.

THE
MAN AMONG THE MONKEYS;
OR,
NINETY DAYS IN APELAND.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED

THE PHILOSOPHER AND HIS MONKEYS,
THE PROFESSOR AND THE CROCODILE,
AND OTHER
STRANGE STORIES OF MEN AND ANIMALS.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS,
MANY OF THEM BY
GUSTAVE DORÉ.

LONDON:
WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1873.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE MAN AMONG THE MONKEYS.

CHAPTER I.

Origin of my family name of Marasquin.—Mistake in this respect on the part of my ambitious Grandfather.—My Ancestors’ profession honourable, but dangerous.—Mine the same.—A Tiger deprives me of my Father, whose Business I carry on.—My Fondness for Animals, and my skill in stuffing them.—The terrible Tricks which they play me.—The Malay Pirates more untamable than my Animals.—The English Stations founded to destroy them are devastated by Yellow Fever and something else.—Vice-Admiral Campbell visits my Menagerie.—The rare and curious Animals it contained.—Baboons and Chimpanzees.—Passions and rivalries.—An Ape as wicked as a Human Being.—My Mother perishes in the Flames.—I determine on a voyage to Oceania.—I charter a Chinese Junk, and find it manned by Pirates.—We encounter a fearful Tempest.

I was born at Macao, in China, and am descended from one of those brave adventurers who, under the leadership of the celebrated Vasco de Gama, boldly left Lisbon, towards the end of the fifteenth century, to conquer the Indies.

If I have good reason to congratulate myself on the accuracy of my pedigree, I have, nevertheless, no plausible grounds for believing that I am descended from one of those sons of noble families who were attached by the sole tie of glory to their illustrious chief. My grandfather, it is true, used sometimes to say that our name of Marasquin was a corruption of Marascarenhas, one of the greatest of names among those adventurous Portuguese who followed Vasco de Gama from the banks of the Tagus to the end of Asia; but I have always had serious doubts upon this score.

Moreover, my worthy grandfather himself, Nicholas Marasquin, was to my knowledge never anything more than an industrious trader, established at Macao. My father, Juan Perez Marasquin, was pretty much the same. To him I owe this testimony—that the extent of his ambition, during a lifetime, too short, alas! to my great regret, was simply to pass for an honest man, a good Christian, and a loyal bird-fancier.

This, then, was his profession; I do not blush for it, although certain persons, through ignorance, or actuated by jealousy, have sought to reduce it to the level of a licensed dealer in game and poultry.

Even without descending so low as this, it would still be very unfair to regard the bird-fancier’s profession—which, by the way, became in later years my own—as restricted to the mere sale of birds, such as we know it ordinarily to be followed in Europe. My father possessed in his vast menagerie one of the finest collections of which the Portuguese Indies could boast, for it comprised not merely birds, but all kinds of rare and curious animals. Sumatra, Java, Borneo, New Guinea, were all represented there by specimens of some of the strangest and most exquisitely formed creatures which inhabit in their native state the almost impenetrable forests of the eastern hemisphere. The profession of naturalist, when exercised on this scale, is really a very lucrative one, for the taste of the European colonists, and the almost insane passion of the Chinese, for these interesting products of nature, are matters of notoriety.

To his trade in living animals my father added the art and mystery of stuffing them when dead, which was not the least lucrative profession of the two. He had given me lessons in this learned and delicate art of restoring to defunct birds and quadrupeds not alone the precise forms but the very attitudes which they affected during lifetime. Thanks to the counsels of so excellent a demonstrator, I acquired a remarkable skill in taxidermy; and you will find further on, if you read through this account of my adventures, that I was indebted to this useful and beautiful science for my escape from the tragical end which at one period menaced me.

Our house had prospered for more than a century at Macao. My father, on succeeding to the collection, added considerably to it, and thanks to the intelligent care of the good, economical, and devoted woman he espoused, he managed to raise his establishment to the very highest position in that particular branch of industry in which he was engaged.

But if this business yields, as I have already said, such rich rewards, on the other hand it is attended not only with difficulties, but with perils as well, as I have had only too many opportunities of proving. It is carried on under conditions of which most people are ignorant. It is not sufficient for a dealer in animals to purchase a bargain, and then to sell it again at a profit. It is requisite that he should go the length of procuring in a wild state those rarer kinds of animals which, when obtained, are certain to realise a good price. Hence the indispensable necessity of being at once both merchant and hunter, or rather of being first of all hunter before becoming merchant.

My father used to go himself to hunt most of the animals in which he dealt—a laborious kind of occupation, which I, in my turn, learnt to follow, whilst accompanying him on his expeditions—sometimes to the coast of China—sometimes to the jungles of the Isle of Hainan, so prolific in wild animals—sometimes as far as Japan, in spite of the obstacles and perils of a navigation bravely undertaken in barques of slender construction, spite of the Malay pirates—those veritable sharks, who swallow everything that crosses their path; and spite of the cruel punishments which used formerly to await those whom the Chinese and Japanese chanced to find trespassing on their sacred territories.

My father was in the habit of bringing back from those distant expeditions—and later I had the satisfaction of bringing back with him—panthers, tigers, boas, leopards, and, above all, innumerable varieties of apes. It was during one of our last hunting expeditions in the Island of Formosa that my father, assailed by a young tiger, which he was on the point of enveloping in a net so as to capture it alive, had half a shoulder and a portion of a thigh carried off by a blow of the brute’s paw. I had the gratification of defending him and protecting him from the further rage of the furious creature; and had, moreover, the satisfaction of carrying him back with me to Macao, though I had not the happiness of seeing him live. Badly tended by the doctors of the country, he languished for a couple of years with wounds which they did not know how to cicatrise, and died at length after undergoing the most frightful sufferings. Just before he drew his last breath in my arms, he begged of me not to continue in his profession. I promised him I would not; but as he had left me nothing else to live upon and to support my poor mother, and as, to speak frankly, I had no taste for any other kind of pursuit, I was compelled to break my promise. You will see from the tale which you are about to peruse the fearful punishment I brought upon myself by so doing.

I stuck, then, to my father’s business, and, in order to prove to the valuable connection acquired by long years of good and loyal management how anxious I was to carry it on with energy, I increased the number of my examples of rare animals, and sent afar experienced hunters charged to bring back with them, to the latitudes of the Indies, specimens hitherto unknown. Being satisfied by long experience that luxury dazzled the eye, and consequently attracted the attention of buyers, I set to work to renovate the interior of my bazaar. Bronze and gilding were had recourse to, to relieve the too apparent simplicity of my cages. An English cleanliness reigned throughout all parts of the establishment, which, in the evening, I lighted up with gas, a dazzling novelty in those days for Macao.

Here I ought to mention a singular trait in my character. I was remarkably fond of animals at first, by reason of my benevolent organisation; afterwards, as a natural result of the unremitting study which I had been obliged to make of their forms, features, movements, customs, manners, instincts, passions, and intelligence; their sympathies and antipathies; their caprices, maladies, and affinity, more or less expressed with man, with a thousand other attributes essentially belonging to their nature, which is perhaps still more obscure and mysterious than our own.

I had pushed my observations so far on those particular beings with whom it is now-a-days maintained we have a certain affinity, that I could easily recognise among them those whose instinctive dispositions corresponded in a measure with our own, and who would have become, for example, barristers, if any such profession as that of the Bar existed amongst apes, for they were always gesticulating, haranguing, and arguing. I recognised again such as would have been doctors, among those who were continually occupying themselves with the physical condition of their fellows, examining their tongues, their throats, and the inside of their eyes; others who would certainly have become comedians, for they were perpetually making grimaces, and playing and dancing from morning to night; others again who would have made first-rate astronomers, for they invariably arranged themselves so as to have the sun always shining on the tips of their noses. I recognised, moreover, with a similar infallibility, those who possessed a taste for commerce, apes who made a point of collecting together all the fruit and corn which fell from the negligent hands of their fellows, and of piling it up in a corner. In like manner I distinguished the misers, the spendthrifts, the madcaps, the bullies, the good fathers and mothers, the mothers given to flirting, and the incorrigibly bad sons; and particularly thieves of every shade, from the sharper moving in good society, who cheats at the card-table, to the more daring robber who takes to the highway. I should have said of the one, “Here is an ape who would loll in his carriage if he had only a white cravat;” of the other, that “he would be safe to be hung if he only happened to wear a coat.”

As apes are far more saleable animals when their natural talent for imitation is developed by the aid of education, I made a point of putting most of those in my collection through a course of instruction, the object of which was to render them more attractive and engaging in the eyes of intending purchasers. I taught them, for instance, to throw somersaults, to jump through hoops, to dance, to play the tambourine, to march, to fence, and to salute in approved military style. Many among them, I admit, were unwilling scholars, and chafed and fretted under the tuition they received; some so much so, indeed, that, as is commonly the case with members of the human family, they could only be persuaded to prosecute their studies by the lively fear of a little wholesome correction. All this, however, arose simply from their not knowing so well as I did what was really for their own advantage.

Spite of the many little tiffs which arose between us in our several capacities of master and scholars, I conceived, in my character of naturalist, painter, doctor, philosopher, and instructor, far more than in my character of merchant, a strong liking for my boarders. I succeeded, by my powers of penetration, in reading in their eyes their desires, wants, and thoughts, and almost ended by conversing with them. In this psychological study I should, without doubt, have attained a height unknown to the most skilful naturalists of our grand European museums, if the fatal accident through which my poor father lost his life had not all at once put an end to my passion for animals. After this unfortunate calamity it was impossible for me not to see in each animal of my collection an accomplice of the tiger which had deprived my parent of existence. This antipathy, day by day growing stronger, caused me at first to neglect the brutes, and afterwards to punish them with far more severity than I had hitherto been accustomed to exhibit towards them. They soon perceived this, since animals have stronger instincts perhaps than men, and thereupon they repaid me with hatred and spite for the rigour with which I ordinarily treated them. They became wicked and vindictive; and I, on my part, became only the more inflexible. A struggle commenced between us, which was carried to a point when I was no longer able to rule them except by threats and red-hot bars of iron.

This was the result; if, in order to punish and to tame them, I no longer allowed any one among them to leave his cage, I was obliged from motives of prudence to refrain from entering any of their dens. On both sides there was a permanent state of anger and hostility, and I must say there was no end to the wicked tricks they played me. The last one they were guilty of was of so cruel, and indeed terrible a character, that if I were to pass it over in silence, the origin of my prodigious troubles would be rendered in a great measure unintelligible. One alone was guilty of this deed, though all were in a degree parties to it by reason of their undisguised animosity towards me.

Vice-Admiral Campbell, who at that time was commander of the English naval station in Oceania, was in the habit, every time he touched at Macao, of visiting my bazaar, and of making purchases for his aviaries and ship menageries of such things as parroquets, birds from the Island of Lugon, or tame tigers, which served to amuse him during his passage from one island to another, and throughout the long anchorages he was occasionally compelled to make up some wearisome and disagreeable inlet.

I may here say a few words on the importance of the English stations in the Chinese and Australian seas. The object of these—which, by the way, is not always attained—is to protect the lives and properties of Europeans from the descents of Chinese and Malay pirates, a numerous and terrible race. These formidable sea-serpents, who are to Oceania what the Algerians were in former times to the Mediterranean, recognise no authority under heaven—neither that of the Emperor of China, backed by his mandarins; nor that of the sultans who reign over some few large islands, like Borneo and Mindanao; nor even that of the English and Dutch viceroys, representatives of powerful nations, it is true, but who find considerable difficulty in making their flags respected in these distant seas.

The Malay pirates may be said to brave everything, and to be everywhere. The archipelago of Sooloo, which contains no less than 160 islands, is entirely peopled by them. At an appointed time they will sail forth over the waters with a fleet of, perhaps, 500 junks, manned by 5,000 sailors, and lie in ambuscade for unsuspecting merchantmen. The booty which they secure they divide among themselves; and the prisoners whom they take are only set at liberty on the receipt of a considerable ransom: too frequently they are killed. These water-rats have sometimes pushed their audacity so far as to make descents in the very midst of such great centres of commerce as the islands of Sumatra and Java; and on one occasion they even dared to come and buy powder and ball at Macao. What is quite as remarkable, too, the merchants of this place did not hesitate a moment to sell them all the ammunition they required: in this respect reminding one of those mercenary Dutchmen who, when besieged by the Spaniards, made a practice each evening of selling to their adversaries—no doubt at remunerative prices—the cannon-balls which they had fired against their town during the day. These pirates are apparently indestructible; they have lasted for centuries as it is, and they bid fair to last for centuries more.

It is to protect its subjects against the poisoned daggers of these swarming bandits that England, as I have mentioned above, is constantly sending forth ships to innumerable points on the sea-coast of China, and to the interminable shores scattered round about.

These vessels often remain for entire years in localities which are believed to be menaced with a visit from these formidable corsairs. It is then that the officers take up their quarters on shore, that tents are pitched, and houses even are constructed, where naval men can manage to lodge in something like comfort.

This particular kind of naval campaign is much dreaded by the English sailors, obliged to contend at the same time against tempests, pirates, and fevers of every kind and colour; and, above all, with the wearisomeness arising from the monotonous kind of life they are here forced to lead, and which may be described as the yellow fever of the mind.

Vice-Admiral Campbell, who commanded, as I have already said, at one of these stations, had hoisted his pennant on board Her Majesty’s steam frigate Halcyon.

The admiral was preparing to leave the roads of Macao on the very day that he came with all his staff—captains, lieutenants, commanders, and officers of every grade—to view my menagerie. Some of these gentlemen had brought their wives with them, whence I concluded that their stay at the station to which they were about to proceed would be an unusually long one.

Fortunately, I had received a short time previously some considerable additions to my stock of animals; and I can truly say that my establishment at this time was alike worthy of the attention of men of science and of amateurs. Besides birds from every clime, which enriched my aviaries, I possessed gazelles from Egypt, bisons from Missouri, goats from Cashmere, ant-eaters, jaguars, leopards from Senegambia, otters, polar bears, black panthers, lynxes, moose-deer from Canada, rhinoceroses with one horn, llamas from Brazil, lions from Bengal, and a magnificent selection of tigers. But the cream of my collection was its endless variety of apes: waggish, wicked, shy, wild, grave, pensive, sinister, intellectual, stupid, melancholy, and grotesque. I had ourang-outangs, gibbons, baboons, papios, mandrills, wanderoos, monkeys, macaques, patas monkeys, malbroncks, mangabeys, lemurs, talapoins, cluks, and magots. Of all these apes, there were four that seemed to divide among themselves the curiosity of the large party at that moment assembled in my museum.

Firstly, there were two baboons of unequalled strength and ferocity—as large as men, as intelligent as men, and, I was about to add, as wicked as men. They made their cage shake again with their violent movements, they often turned it over even; and, in an excess of anger, would twist the iron bars through which they made a point of insulting every one that stopped to gaze at them, as though these stout metal rods were so many sticks of pliant wax. How was it that visitors generally were so pleased with them? Could it have been because they were so supremely wicked? I am half afraid that this was the reason.

The two other apes who divided the sympathies of the visitors with the big baboons were a male and female chimpanzee, both possessing youth, and, I may add, even grace. The male chimpanzee was gentle as a young girl, delicate, sensible, understanding everything, approaching as near the limits of intelligence as is permitted to a being deprived of the Divine light of reason. He was fond of children, played with them, and appeared to have a taste for music, since he invariably left off eating whenever he heard the sounds of an instrument.

With me he filled the office of a footman. At dinner he held the plates, and handed round the wine; he even ate at table when I invited him. The trifling marks of attention which I occasionally paid him made the other apes jealous, almost to frenzy.

With regard to his companion, who was likewise a young chimpanzee, she differed from most female apes, who are fond of ribbons, lace, and embroidered handkerchiefs, and appeared perfectly contented with her own natural grace and prettiness. She was never so happy as when some one gave her a beautiful flower, which she would either place behind her ear, or else regard with looks of melancholy for entire hours.

I had named my two baboons, the one Karabouffi the First, the other Karabouffi the Second; and I had given to the male chimpanzee the name of Mococo, and to the female that of Saïmira.

Mococo loved Saïmira very much; and it is quite certain that Saïmira on her part loved Mococo in return.

Karabouffi the First had also a hidden and terrible love for Saïmira. Nothing could exceed the black jealousy of this ferocious baboon. Whenever the two young chimpanzees, who enjoyed the liberty of perambulating the galleries of the museum, passed in front of his cage, his terrible claws became rigid as iron hooks, his eyes flashed forth angry and vindictive glances, as he curled up his blue lips, and gnashed his teeth. On these occasions terror reigned throughout the menagerie, and even the lions and tigers seemed lost in reflection.

There was not a single one of these animals that did not at times recall to me, point by point, the characters, desires, and passions of men. I became convinced with Buffon, who has written so many admirable pages on natural history, that if, instead of beating and ill-treating them and making them constantly suffer, we were only to study them, and take a real and active interest in such an occupation, we should penetrate an immense and unexplored world of ideas and sensations, where as yet we can be hardly said to have placed our feet.

Vice-Admiral Campbell was so delighted with the grimaces, the tricks, the eccentricities, and I must also add the ferocity, of my boarders, that he immediately purchased an ape and a monkey. Whereupon every officer, out of deference to his superior, selected in like manner an ape and a monkey.

I confess I could not bring myself to part with Mococo and Saïmira, for it was necessary to sell both or to keep both; but Vice-Admiral Campbell’s lady wished so much to possess them, that I had no alternative except to resign them to her. I knew, moreover, that she would take as much care of them as I myself had been in the habit of; nevertheless, I asked her to promise me never to leave them in the power of their prime persecutor, Karabouffi the First. She gave me her word, and I abandoned my two young chimpanzees with confidence to her keeping. The poor things appeared even more afflicted than myself at our separation, for they embraced me like two children, and moistened my hands with their tears. Overcome by these marks of affection, I was on the point of taking them back again; but I recollected that I was a trader, and that a trader must sell the wares in which he deals: interest therefore had its way.

As all the gentlemen belonging to the station bought, as I think I have already said, my animals in pairs, it happened that, owing to my having an odd ape, one of the two baboons, Karabouffi the Second, was left on my hands. For want of a female to pair with him, he was condemned to remain in the menagerie, a circumstance which irritated him to that degree as to cause him to utter shrieks of rage on seeing his companions about to be taken away while he alone was to be left behind.

His companions in their turn, pitying the lot of their unfortunate comrade who remained a captive behind the iron bars, uttered the most plaintive cries, and sought to prevent themselves from being conveyed on board the vessels which were to carry them to the distant station. It became necessary, therefore, to have recourse to the whip.

As may be supposed, all Macao was in commotion at the event. However, the law was strong, and the whole of the apes were eventually embarked.

It would be impossible to give an idea, either by the aid of language or of painting, of the dark and revengeful looks which the solitary baboon directed towards me when I re-entered the menagerie after his companions’ departure.

I question whether the most irritated and malignant of men, burning with feelings of suppressed hatred, ever condensed such unmistakable threats of vengeance into his eyes as I could read in those of the infuriated baboon. I saw there a positive hankering after blood, and that blood, moreover, my own.

Nearly a year had elapsed since this extensive sale of apes, on which I had, as the reader may suppose, realised enormous profits, when one night I woke up suffocated by a dense smoke which seemed to rise from the crevices in the floor of my room. This flooring, which was composed of very thin boards, extended above the menagerie. I found myself positively choking, and rose from my bed with infinite difficulty, and directed my steps towards the window, which I immediately flung open. Indeed, I opened every window and door so as not to perish of suffocation. But directly the air had penetrated into the apartment, it was no longer smoke that I had to contend with, but fire, which, running along the cracks of the floor, enveloped ere long the whole house in a blaze.

My first thought was to save my poor mother, but I was, alas! too late. The back part of the house, where her room was situated, was the first to be filled with smoke, and my poor mother must have been suffocated before she could call out for assistance. For myself, I was dragged from the room where I wished to die. My neighbours saved me, carried me into the street, and placed me on a stone bench, from whence I saw my entire establishment consumed before my eyes. Through the broken door, through the open entrance of the bazaar, I was a witness of a spectacle which I shall never forget.

In the midst of the devouring flames, which were roasting my finest birds, and in which my superb tigers were writhing with fearful cries, nobody meanwhile daring to approach near enough to attempt to rescue them, the baboon, a lighted brand in each hand, danced, chuckled, grinned, and frisked about with a hideous kind of joy. His attitude, his impudent looks, indeed everything about his frightful expression, sufficiently proved him to be the author of the conflagration—he who, in the course of a long-meditated night of vengeance, had managed to procure some matches with which he had seen the keeper of an evening light up the bazaar; he who, breaking his chains and the bars of his cage, had first turned on the gas, and after allowing it to escape had then set light to it. Such was the supreme vengeance of this terrible baboon, Karabouffi the Second.

One of my neighbours shot him as he was dancing in the midst of the flames. But I was not the less ruined; I had not the less lost my excellent mother.

Under the weight of so many afflictions, and so much misery, I resolved to change my profession; remembering rather late my poor father’s admonition. For more than two years I traded in ivory, feathers, and furs; but not being versed in this kind of traffic, I made only moderate profits, and entertained no hope whatever of realising any very great ones in future. Moreover, this mode of life, less active than what I had been accustomed to, did not please me; my former pursuit was continually recalled to my mind by the enticing nature of my studies in natural history. I regretted it even for the dangers with which it was beset, and of which I have already spoken. At last, after a good deal of hesitation, I determined to follow it again. I was still young; several thousand piastres were lying to my credit with M. Silvao, banker at Goa. I had the means of re-establishing my business; but it was necessary for me to undertake two or three journeys to the islands of Oceania, and join the great hunters of wild beasts and birds of prey, with whom I counted upon scouring the woods and swamps. It was a hardy and adventurous course to follow; still there was no other way of re-stocking my establishment at Macao. I hesitated for a time, I admit; but after awhile I took leave of my few relations and my numerous friends, and made the final preparations for my voyage. I ought not to omit to say that I had chartered a Chinese junk on my own account, and that I had it at my service for an entire year. My first destination was Australia, that immense island, as large as a continent, where I was certain, according to the accounts of travellers, to find some of the most varied and least known animals of creation.

I set sail on the 3rd of July, 1850, in the junk which I had chartered, and which did not make up for its great weight by any unusual strength. It was an old tub of a thing, none the better for its numerous voyages to Corea and Japan. Formerly it had been able to resist bad weather, but, for all that, it could only boast at the present time of somewhat shaky ribs and planks, scarcely to be relied on in rough weather, for anything that Master Ming-Ming, its very indulgent captain, might say.

My first point of debarkation being New Holland or Australia, we steered direct south on quitting Macao.

For eight days we were favoured by a wind which carried us straight in this direction. So we soon found ourselves in the midst of the archipelago of the Philippines, spite of the want of agreement prevailing among the crew, which was composed of eight Chinese, eight Malays, and eight Portuguese, three nations holding each other in the greatest possible aversion, detesting one another as much as the Genoese formerly detested the Corsicans, and the Corsicans the Genoese, and settling all disputes by the arbitration of the knife.

While passing the Island of Mindanao, and at the moment of entering the Sea of Celebes, we sprung a leak, and as if to make up for the fine weather we had already enjoyed, the sky became overcast, and squalls began to blow from every point of the compass.

Throughout ten entire days we endeavoured to pass the Straits of Mindanao. The wind and currents, however, always drove us towards the west, and the greater the efforts which we made to resist this deviation from our course the more the leak in the junk increased.

To aggravate our position in the midst of a sea of itself sufficiently dangerous, the crew refused to work at pumping out the water which was gaining on us every hour. Chinese, Malays, and Portuguese alike refused to perform this task as being too laborious for them; laborious it may have been, but on it, nevertheless, the safety of all depended.

Captain Ming-Ming, I could only too plainly see, had no power whatever over his incongruous crew; I even suspected him of having formerly exercised the profession of pirate in company with the eight Malays, who placed him on a footing of such perfect equality as unmistakably indicated the bonds of an old and equivocal fraternity, and deprived him of any kind of authority over them. The discovery was not very assuring for me, who knew so well, as I have already explained, the utterly savage character of these untamable brigands. This revelation, I confess, startled me; I nevertheless dissembled my fears, but took the precaution of loading a couple of pistols, and placing one in each of my two side pockets.

The crew would not work at the pumps, and the water was continually rising in the hold. Not by any means such good sailors as the Chinese and Malays, the Portuguese portion of the crew became alarmed at the fate which evidently threatened us, and proposed to make for some port. This the Malays and Chinese opposed, and their will carried the question, which only helped to confirm me in my suspicions of their former character, as they evidently did not wish to show themselves in any port which boasted of a regular police.

Moreover, what port should we make for? In the first place, where were we? Were we above or below the Equator? Were we sailing along the Strait of the Moluccas or of Macassar?

Master Ming-Ming, more learned in the art of smoking opium than in that of navigating a vessel, was not the man to have informed us. The sky was black, the wind blew our great bamboo sails into shreds, and the waves seemed as though they would engulf us.

When it was no longer possible to overcome the danger which had now become most imminent, this confused medley crew began one and all to change their minds. The instinct of preservation awoke within them when it was too late. They attempted to clear the water out of the junk; but the pumps would no longer act. Fear then took possession of these bandits, every one of whom, Malays, Portuguese, and Chinese, greedily sought land on the horizon, although the chance was that they would be hung as pirates as soon as they set foot on shore. During this anxious time I could do nothing beyond looking to the preservation from sea water of my good arms, my nets, and the various traps with which I had left Macao, in the hope of replenishing my menagerie. Alas! what was the use of all these precautions? Was I destined to escape myself from my present critical position?

On the twenty-eighth day of our voyage, there was no other course left us but to abandon ourselves to the discretion of the tempest. Master Ming-Ming therefore left the junk to itself. I don’t think, although I have seen many hurricanes on the coasts of Japan, whilst sailing with my father, that the winds and waves were ever so frightfully disturbed as they were on this occasion. The old junk bounded on the crest of the sea like an elastic ball on the ground.

After three days passed between life and death, we perceived a point black as ink, standing out from the lurid sky on the horizon. The Malays, whose eyes have an infallible power of penetration, affirmed that it was land. We sped along with all the violence of a hurricane. The night having almost immediately supervened, we had not time to calculate if, when the light of day re-appeared, we should have reached or passed this wished-for land. And what a night it was for us, with neither sails, nor masts, nor rudder, with the wind blowing great guns, and the junk seeming as though it were splitting in pieces on every side!

CHAPTER II.

We are Shipwrecked.—I alone escape.—I find myself on an unknown island.—A strange form appears to me and vanishes.—A deluge of Apes.—I am cudgelled with a rattan cane.—Am saved at length by my cravat.—I am parched with thirst.—I discover water.—Four thousand of us drink in company.—Ingenious way of procuring fruit from the top of a tall tree.—Two valets-de-chambre, such as are seldom seen in Europe.—I miraculously escape their care.

At last the day broke, and we saw land only a quarter of a mile distant. But this quarter of a mile was only a chain of shoals white with foam from the sea incessantly breaking over them. It was inevitable that ere many minutes elapsed poor crazy junk would break itself as the sea was doing on the rocks, covered with foam and bearded with patches of slimy sea-weed, which lay direct in our course. We had no time to reflect on the fate which awaited us. Two sudden and frightful concussions, two blows of the heel, to use sailor’s language, shattered the ribs of the poor junk, whose poop at the same time was carried away by a terrible sea, and with it five of the crew. We scarcely heard the cries which they uttered as they disappeared in the watery abyss.

The other sailors at once sought to possess themselves of the only boat we had, in order, if possible, to reach the land. They had, however, no sooner commenced lowering it than a frightful struggle arose as to who should occupy it. It would scarcely have held more than half-a-dozen persons, and there were fifteen desperate men eager to fill it. Knives were drawn. A cutting of throats commenced; but the theatre of the struggle was about to disappear beneath the feet of conquerors and conquered alike.

Having kept clear of this desperate struggle for the possession of the boat, I caught sight at this moment of danger of one of those buoys fastened by a rope to the cable of the anchor, and which serves to mark the exact point where the anchor has been let go. I at once pull out my knife and cut the rope at a certain distance from the cable, and then seizing the buoy in both my arms, threw myself with it into the midst of the hissing waves. Engulfed an instant beneath the surge, on rising again to the surface, I turn my head to see what has become of my companions. They and the last remains of the junk have disappeared!

For three hours I fought with death. What agony I suffered! Every time I endeavoured to hook myself on as it were to the branches of coral which projected above the waves, I was driven back by the surf: and my gory hands let go of their painful support. My strength failed me; I had scarcely sufficient left to seize the rope attached to the buoy. I had lost all energy, and almost the desire for existence, when a last wave enveloped me, and carried me with my buoy to the bottom of the sea. I felt myself getting weaker and weaker, then I became cold, and recollect nothing more.

When I re-opened my eyes I found myself lying extended on a shore covered with sea-weed and marine plants. I fancied too that trees were not far distant. My astonishment was that of a person waking from a trance—I hadn’t strength enough to rise. The storm no longer raged. The sun, which appeared to my still weak sight to have attained a certain height in the heavens, spread a general glow around, and the sand grew warm beneath my touch. By degrees the sensation of life returned to me. I sought for myself, I asked myself if it were really I, and whereabouts I was; I saw for certainty that there were trees—in fact a forest at some little distance off. My lethargy passed away like a fleeting cloud, and I endeavoured to rise and walk a few steps; but my legs bent under me. Nevertheless I held myself upright. The sun, which had risen still higher in the heavens, now shone down almost perpendicularly on the ground. The heat diffused throughout the air was so intense that I fell faint and exhausted at the foot of a palm-tree whose cool and refreshing shade served to revive me.

Gradually my eyes grew heavy, and I fell fast asleep. I do not know how long I remained plunged in this second and more refreshing lethargy; but when I awoke, I judged by the position of the sun that it was afternoon. From the degree of comfort which I felt, I concluded that I must have slept altogether something like eight hours. I can, however, say nothing positive on this score, my watch having stopped from the various shocks my whole body had received since the preceding evening.

In order to dissipate the heaviness which held possession of my senses after this prolonged sleep, I rose and took a few rapid steps straight before me. I had scarcely proceeded twenty yards in a direction immediately opposite to the sea, when I caught sight of something like a human form at the end of a long avenue of trees. Naturally enough, my first impression was that this must be some inhabitant of the island on which I had been cast by my unlucky shipwreck. I was already rejoicing at the discovery, though, I must confess, not without a certain amount of inquietude as to the possible nature of the companion whom fortune had sent me. I walked straight in the direction in which I had first seen him; but, to my intense surprise, after the lapse of five or six minutes, I failed in encountering him, or even in discovering what had become of him. Had my eyes deceived me? Had the numerous mirages of the sun assisted to produce some kind of hallucination? I knew not how to explain the affair, which left upon me a certain disagreeable impression. Nevertheless I continued to walk on.

I had proceeded no very great distance, when all at once another view opened to my sight; and, to my intense satisfaction, I again saw the figure which I had observed a few minutes previously. Ah! how truly happy I felt at this second discovery! I could manage to distinguish him far more clearly than I had done before, although the distance between us was very much greater. I watched him with the utmost attention, and was surprised to find how excessively quick and lively all his movements were. He was continually disappearing and appearing again, passing as quick as lightning from one point to another. After a time I felt convinced that he had seen me, and that he was afraid. I thereupon advanced towards him with increased boldness, and had just arrived at the spot where I had last seen him, when something—indefinable at the first glance, a kind of hairy and sinewy form, uttering noisy, guttural, and savage cries, which were taken up and repeated by the many echoes around—suddenly descended from the top of a tree, almost at my very feet. It was an ape. With one bound he mounted the tree again, then sprang down, and ended by placing himself immediately in my path, as though to prevent me from proceeding.

This pretension on his part was not at all to my mind; I therefore broke off the first branch of a tree which I could manage to reach with my hand—it was, I believe, a small stick of cane—and threatened the animal with it. My action evidently displeased him. At a second cry, which he uttered as a call, judge of my consternation to see rushing from the four points of the compass, through the openings in the forest, clouds upon clouds of apes, of all forms, colours, and sizes, who in an instant, clambering up the trees, rolling themselves among the branches like squirrels, or taking possession of the ground about me, proceeded to regard me with quick and menacing glances, and to overwhelm me with hissing cries, and gnashings of the teeth, so fierce, so noisy, so positively deafening, that I became quite dizzy and bewildered. I was compelled to clap my hands over my ears, so as not to lose all sense of consciousness in the midst of this infernal commotion. Nothing like it, I believe, had ever been heard before in the forests of Oceania.

Clouds upon clouds of apes, of all forms, colours, and sizes, clambering up the trees, rolling themselves among the branches like squirrels, or taking possession of the ground about me.—[Page 30.]

My Macao experience with regard to apes was not lost upon me at this supreme moment. In spite of my trouble, and of the danger with which I was menaced, I managed to recognise, without difficulty, the different kinds of apes in which I had formerly dealt. I noticed the duks, with their long tails, smooth faces, black feet, and red ears; the wanderoos, such troublesome fellows that they are obliged to be kept in iron cages; lowandos, with hairless flesh-coloured faces, and all the rest of their bodies as black as their noses, possessing long claws, and having on their heads large wigs of grisly, bushy, compact hair. I saw monkeys with purple faces, and with violet hands, trailing behind them tails terminating in white tufts of hair; capuchins, covered with a flowing down of a yellowish black tint, which serves them for a kind of hood; monas, with white bellies and wide open eyes surrounded with circles, black as their feet, hands, and wrists; then coaïtas, or spider monkeys, with tails that they can turn to much the same purposes as the elephant does his proboscis; then black-crested simpias; then ourang-outangs; then hundreds of mangabeys, monkeys with long tails, and known as apes of Madagascar. I recognised them by their naked eyelids, their striking whiteness, their long grey muzzles, and their eyebrows of coarse and bushy hair. In the same way I recognised the gloomy macaques, the turbulent pinches, the malbroncks, and the pig-tailed macaques, which gambolled, frolicked, danced, kicked, stamped, capered, and wheeled about on every side. Hundreds and hundreds more pressed forward to catch sight of me, but they were too far off for me to distinguish them, as I had done those of whom I have just spoken.

Knowing by experience the thoroughly wicked nature of these animals when congregated together, I resolved to beat a retreat. I was, however, too late. On all sides of me were closely-packed ranks of apes, some of whom seemed possessed of such strength, that any attempt at flight would have been a grave imprudence on my part. I remained, therefore, perfectly still, but not without some little anxiety. Suddenly, all these apes which encircled me round about, commenced to sway to and fro, making at the same time the most hostile demonstrations, although I no longer held in my hand the unlucky cane branch, the original cause of their furious irritation. That I might bear with patience this opposition, which I was most anxious not to increase (thinking that if I were permitted to proceed towards the interior of the island, some inhabitant, friend or enemy, civilised or savage, might rescue me from these insulting occupants of the woods), I amused myself by recalling to mind the wearisomeness of the dull tints which overpower the traveller on his arrival in the first commercial, and the most densely-populated city in the world, that “province covered with houses” called London, the thousand custom-house officers—honourable persons enough, whom I should be very sorry to compare with apes, though they are also at times equally tyrannical—that one meets with on landing. I turned from one reminiscence of the kind to another, until I found myself recalling how on a particular day, on my arrival at Calcutta, the officers at the custom-house pierced with their iron gauge-rod a packet of twenty Cashmere shawls, which were completely spoiled; but on which, nevertheless, I was required to pay duty.

Quick as lightning, he seized the branch of cane which I had thrown on the ground, and before I had time to place myself in a posture of defence, showered blow after blow on my arms and legs.—[Page 33.]

After a time, finding the heat, striking on the open spot where I was standing, somewhat oppressive, I endeavoured, while the disposition of my guards seemed a trifle more to my advantage, to take a few steps in advance. I was, in fact, frightfully hungry, and my lips were parched with thirst. No sooner, however, had I prepared to change my position than all these groups of importunate apes, gathering more closely around me, recommenced their cries and their menaces. They did more, they formed a square; and when they had taken up this strategical position, of which I occupied the centre, one of them, leaving the ranks, advanced towards me. Quick as lightning he seized the branch of cane which I had thrown on the ground; and, before I had time to place myself in a posture of defence, showered blow after blow on my arms and legs, my feet and hands, my face and head, and on my back and sides. These blows followed one another in such rapid succession that, not being able to run away, I commenced bounding about, jumping as though there were blazing coals beneath my feet.

I candidly confess that I suffered quite as much shame as pain. A vile ape was belabouring me, an abominable brute was taking upon himself to administer correction to me in broad daylight! Other miserable apes, witnesses of my moral degradation, were making grimaces and grinning at me, and showing their enjoyment by capering about. It was whilst I thus performed a part in a comedy before their eyes, and they furnished me an occasion of observing them more closely, that I was seized with a singular idea; but the trouble I was in prevented me from following it up. Ah! my position was indeed a painful one, to be thrashed by an ape before an assembly of apes! It is only animals who can introduce such a degree of refinement into cruelty. I know very well that at London, which has the reputation of being an extremely civilised city, people are ready to crush one another to death, when a criminal is hanged before the door of Newgate; and that in Paris, people pay equally dear for places to see a man executed; that it is the same at Brussels, Vienna, and Berlin—nevertheless, spite of the attractions which an execution offers, we neither hang nor decapitate apes; and the right which these animals arrogated to themselves of cudgelling me, appeared to me to be founded neither in reason nor in justice. For the moment they were of course the stronger, and it was necessary that I should give in to them; and I did give in. But it was melancholy to feel that there appeared to be no end to this punishment; my tormentor never once relaxed his exertions, to take even a moment’s rest; but continued laying on his blows, as though he would never tire.

Certainly, with one of the two pistols which I had about me, and which I had been prudent enough not to part with, I could easily have shot the impudent beast through the head; but I remembered too well the accident which happened to a certain president of the French East India Company, to attempt any such thing. One day, when the celebrated French traveller Tavernier accompanied the president on an excursion through some great forest on the banks of the Ganges, the latter, being astounded at the immense number of apes which he saw, and which suddenly surrounded him just as they had surrounded me, stopped his carriage, and desired Tavernier to knock two or three of them over. The servants, knowing very well the vindictive dispositions of these animals, begged of the president not to meddle with them. He, however, insisted, and Tavernier fired, and killed a female with her young. At that very instant the other apes threw themselves, with cries of rage and despair, on the president’s carriage. They knocked over the coachman, the footmen, and the horses, and would have strangled his lordship—torn him to pieces, indeed—if the windows of the carriage had not been promptly closed, and the members of his suite had not engaged in a regular fight with their assailants, from whom they only escaped with an infinite deal of trouble.

The remembrance of the danger which menaced them restrained me from discharging my weapon at the horrible animal, who still continued his blows, spite of my ill-concealed rage, and the efforts which I made to protect myself, Alas! I could do nothing. I was thrashed by him till the blood flowed from me and saturated my garments. I should have assuredly sunk under the constant succession of blows meted out to me, since the cunning and wickedness of these animals went so far as to induce them to volunteer to relieve my tormentor, when he at length felt fatigued with his exertions; yes, I should certainly have fallen a victim to their brutality, but for an idea, a really admirable idea, which occurred to me; but which, unfortunately, like all excellent ideas, came very late. The increased pain which I endured evidently freshened up my memory; and, all of a sudden, it struck me that I had heard of travellers, who found themselves in the same predicament as myself, escaping by means of a ruse, which ruse I resolved for my part at once to employ. I therefore proceeded to untie my cravat (a superb cravat, bought in Bengal the preceding year), and, unfolding it, threw it among the crowd of apes, who no sooner caught sight of my bright red neckerchief than they rushed forward in a body to seize it, with loud chatterings, and other signs of curiosity and delight. My tormentor followed the example of his fellows; and, whilst they disputed among themselves the possession of the spoil which I had resigned to them, I ran off, with all possible speed, towards the interior of the island, where I reckoned on meeting with some of the inhabitants, and certainly on procuring a little water, to quench my intolerable thirst. After a breathless run of five or six hundred yards I looked back, and had the satisfaction of finding that none of the apes were following me. For an entire hour I continued to run in this manner over a tract of soft sand, through groups of trees entwined together, and forming bright masses of foliage of various colours, and which by-and-by bowed down to the earth, indicating a hollow where I might possibly find water. I was thoroughly fatigued, I was in a burning heat. Was I about to discover the water I so ardently longed for?

On rounding a hill covered with a whitish green moss, I was suddenly struck by the sight of a lake upwards of a mile in length, bordered by tall trees, ranged in a series of terraces, as though they had been planted thus by a professor of landscape gardening. A slight descent, along the same soft silvery turf which I had just now passed over, conducted me to the brink of a clear, sparkling sheet of water. I knelt down to drink, and, placing my parched lips in it, my ecstasy was so complete that I prolonged it for nearly a quarter of an hour, partaking at intervals of draught after draught of the reviving delicacy.

My enjoyment was like a dream, it was so concentrated and so tranquil. But the cry which escaped me on raising my head, was not altogether one of gratitude towards Heaven, to whom I owed the delicious joy of having been enabled thus to refresh myself. Intense surprise had something to do with my exclamation.

The banks of the lake were covered along their entire length by those very apes who had so pitilessly tormented, jeered at, and beaten me.—[Page 36.]

The banks of the lake were covered along their entire extent by those very apes who had so pitilessly tormented, jeered at, and beaten me. They had all been kneeling just as I had knelt, had all risen at the same time as I had done, and there they were with their muzzles dripping with water. When I thought I had lost them, they had no doubt followed me in silence through the wood, by the aërial route of the tall branching trees, and on seeing me kneel down to drink had imitated all my actions. Although my limbs ached with fatigue, and I was sore from head to foot from the innumerable blows which I had received, and although I began to experience serious inquietude, on finding myself, since my shipwreck, in the midst of this constantly increasing crowd of apes, I could not restrain a burst of laughter on seeing with what burlesque fidelity they reproduced my most trifling gestures, my most accidental attitudes, and even my involuntary movements. A new stupefaction took possession of me at finding my burst of laughter immediately echoed by thousands of similar cachinnations. Unable to control myself, I laugh my loudest, they, in their turn, laugh louder still. This comedy threatened never to come to an end. Terrified at the unaccustomed noise, the birds, hidden in their nests of moss, dispersed among the ferns, swarming through the network of creepers, or asleep under the leaves, the great, the small, the invisible birds—birds whose names are known only to the Creator, and of whose fantastic shapes and plumage the most comprehensive human language could scarcely give an idea—birds clad in brocade, like the ancient doges; others with triple embroidered collars, like the princesses of the middle ages; others, the plumage of whose tails flashed forth as many rays as the sun himself, rose, flapped their wings, and took to flight, streaking the sky in frightened curves at the universal thunder of laughter which rent the air. The apes themselves, accustomed as they were to similar commotions on the part of the feathered tribe, were, nevertheless, astonished at the strangeness and novelty of the sight. They stood up on their hind legs in order to enjoy it the more thoroughly. It was then that I remarked something which had before escaped my notice: many of my hairy persecutors wore a kind of narrow red collar, the meaning of which I could not at first possibly understand. A brief reflection, however, made everything clear to me. Each of these red collars was a fragment of the cravat which I had resigned to my tormentors, and which, true to their imitative instincts, they had tied under their chins; I never saw anything more comical than this piece of finery with which several of the apes were strangling themselves, in tying it so tightly that it could not come undone, or be stolen from them by their jealous comrades. These apes in their scarlet cravats presented a spectacle which, under circumstances more propitious to one’s personal security than those in which I at present found myself, I should no doubt have enjoyed immensely.

I had managed to quench my thirst, but my hunger had not been appeased. Far from it in fact, since the satisfaction accorded to the one sense only rendered the other more imperious. My hunger had increased considerably during the last quarter of an hour, for I had noticed on the trees, by the brink of the lake, certain fruits of a bright golden colour, fruits delicious to behold, and no doubt more delicious still to the taste, but situated so high, that never man, even though he were a sailor of Java, could hope to reach and gather them. The trees were from 180 to 200 feet high, with no other branches shooting out from their tall stems except those which clustered together at the summit, with perfectly smooth barks, and offering not the slightest point of support for either hand or foot for three-fourths of their entire height. My eyes coveted this fruit, my stomach yearned for it; but how was I to obtain possession of it? After all manner of sterile calculations as to how this was to be accomplished, I decided to throw, with my utmost strength, a few sharp flints into one of the trees, in the hope of detaching some of the fruit from its stalk and bringing it to the ground. I knew that I was sufficiently adroit to hit the fruit at which I aimed, but for all that it did not break off as I anticipated. The flint, after striking it, bounded from branch to branch with a loud noise—the slightest thing, it must be remembered, produces a loud noise in these solitary isles, the silence of which has not yet been broken by the restless activity of man—encountering in its fall quantities of large leaves lightly joined to the branches of the tree by their juicy stalks. The apes, who had been intently watching all my movements, scarcely awaited the descent of the first stone, before they collected together all the flints they could, and flung them one after another at the topmast branches of the trees. The noise thus made sounded for all the world like the crackling of hail and grapeshot. Delighted with their occupation, they formed as it were a chain, and passed the stones rapidly from hand to hand, so that those who preferred to throw might not be kept waiting. One hears of entire fields of maize being consumed in a few hours by voracious locusts coming from Lybia; here, in a few minutes, fruit, leaves, and branches were detached from the group of trees into the midst of which my flint had taken its useless flight. The banks of the lake were covered with them to such a degree, that I had only to stretch out my hand to grasp any quantity of the fruit which I was dying as it were to taste. The very instant that the apes, to whom I was indebted for this abundant harvest, saw me carry one of these fruits to my mouth, they imitated my example all along the line. A thousand arms were carried to a thousand mouths. The manœuvre was executed as though in obedience to a military command, and with all the precision of Prussian discipline. I raised my elbow—the elbows of the apes were simultaneously raised. I spat out a pip—the air was riddled with pips. The echoes of the lake repeated naught but the ludicrous snapping and clattering of jaws. In a few moments its surface was half hidden by masses of rind stripped from the fruits which I and the apes had devoured with burlesque unanimity.

Although I was now completely at the mercy of chance, and destined perhaps to escape one danger only to fall into another still greater, I nevertheless desired to free myself from the odious restraint in which I was held by this accursed assemblage. It was not without fear, moreover, that I saw the day draw in and the night approach. I had no desire to find myself, during the hours of darkness, beset by this legion of demons, whose capricious surprises are not restrained within the same limits which bound the human imagination. I had every hope that the next day might bring me in contact with some of the native population, since the island was evidently not a desert. If I could only penetrate some distance inland, I should no doubt come across human habitations; but, meanwhile, it was necessary to pass through this dreaded night. In my feverish anxiety, increased by the intimate knowledge which I possessed of the cruel ways of these detestable animals, the idea occurred to me that, since they were so obstinately bent on exactly copying all my movements, the best thing to be done was for me to pretend to go to sleep. If I were clever enough to get them off to sleep by the mere force of imitation, I might so far profit by their lethargy as to escape from their surveillance and penetrate to the interior of the island. I was ignorant, it is true, of its extent and shape; but in a whole night’s journey I could certainly make sufficient way to put ten or twelve leagues between them and me. The idea appeared a good one, and I immediately proceeded to put it into execution.

I commenced by collecting several armsful of dry leaves, which I made a point of putting down with all the noise possible, so as to provoke the imitative attention of my guards. And, precisely as I thought, the entire troop immediately rushed forward, and with the most comical precipitation, proceeded to collect armsful of dry leaves, and spread them, as they had seen me do, like straw upon the ground. Delighted with this commencement, I afterwards heaped up a certain quantity of leaves at the foot of a tree where I had chosen a spot for my couch; they immediately did the same. Preparations for slumber being completed on both sides, I extended myself leisurely on my bed. This time my imitators did not move, which was of course a bad sign. There was evidently an unpleasant hitch in the development of the plan by means of which I had hoped that my tormentors would fall into my trap. With their feet buried in the leaves, with outstretched necks and muzzles turned towards me, and with eyes fixed steadily upon me, they followed eagerly the slightest movements of my body, but not one of them laid down as I had done. I began to think that they distrusted me; nevertheless, I pursued my project so as to know for certain what I had to expect. I therefore stretched out my arms as a man does who is about to fall asleep; I gaped once or twice as wide as I possibly could, and at length closed my eyes. Of these three movements, they imitated only one; they gaped enough to dislocate their jaws, but that was all.

I had taken particular care to keep my eyelids lowered, whereas they kept their eyes completely open. I had even carried the pretence of sleep so far as to snore; nothing, however, came of it. Not a single ape, big or little, yellow, black, brown, or grey, fell into the snare.

At length something like a truce was arranged between us. It was at this moment that the idea, which had occurred to me during the thrashing which I had received, came into my mind again. I fancied I could distinguish among this crowd of apes, so attentive in watching my slightest movements, certain faces which were not entirely unknown to me. The first time this strange idea occurred to me I passed it by as the offspring of a troubled brain, but now I felt impressed by its reality.

For a quarter of an hour, and such quarters of hours are centuries, I acted this farce of sleep, and to my disgust discovered that I did not succeed in making a single dupe. All at once, when my eyes were scarcely half open, I perceived two of the biggest apes of the troop coming towards me. They did not approach me walking on all fours along the sand, but after the fashion in which they invariably move about in the wandering and vagabondising kind of life they lead in the woods, that is, by swinging from tree to tree, from branch to branch, and scarcely making more noise than a bird. Having arrived above my head, and God knows if I had them a single instant out of my sight, they slipped down without the slightest noise to the ground, and immediately moved with the same silent precautions, one to my right hand and the other to my left.

Having taken up their positions they remained perfectly immovable for several minutes.

I had to do with two hideous ourang-outangs whose prodigious strength and agility were shown by their short and compact bodies and sinewy limbs. I judged, from these characteristic signs, that they were capable of easily overcoming ten unarmed men. After having carefully observed me, in fact studied me, and one may say, surveyed me all over with a gravity at once droll and magisterial, as though to assure themselves that I was really asleep, one of the two ourang-outangs placed himself at my feet.

The ourang-outang on my right now commenced smelling me under the nose after the fashion in which deer sniff each other, then he examined my hair most attentively, evidently with intentions which my English habits of cleanliness rendered altogether unnecessary. The other ourang-outang having first of all pulled off my shoes, next amused himself with the ingeniousness of a child who wishes at any cost to discover how it is that his spring doll raises and lowers its arms, by bending my toes backwards and forwards, appearing perfectly astonished and somewhat indignant, that a man was as well formed as an ape. These two terrible valets-de-chambre bent upon bestowing their attentions on my person caused me the most frightful distress; for the ourang-outang at my feet, induced, no doubt, by his success with my shoes and stockings, next essayed to pull off my trousers. I would willingly have let him done so, but the ourang-outang at my head opposed him with all his strength, evidently desiring to relieve me of these garments in his own way; a way, I may observe, in which it is perfectly impossible for trousers to be removed. There were first of all some sinister tuggings, then the strife gradually became sullen and obstinate; and at last it was something terrible. I was conscious of this from the successive giving way of buttons, and from the stretching and cracking of the garments under the efforts of these two formidable antagonists, whose field of battle would, in a few moments, most likely be my own body; which would become a prey to their remorseless instinct of destruction, and be torn to pieces by their long, sharp fangs and harpy-like claws.

My death seemed inevitable—I resolved to defend my life to the utmost of my power, and with this view gently slipped my hands into my pockets and drew forth my two pistols without arousing the slightest suspicion. As matters were progressing very fast, I forthwith pointed one of them towards the ourang-outang at my feet, and the other towards his companion at my head, hoping that if I were forced to fire I might succeed in killing both my persecutors, whose deaths would, as a matter of course, be immediately followed by my own. The fate which would await me after this double murder was certainly not doubtful. The two or three hundred apes who were present as spectators of this sight would certainly tear me into more pieces than they had torn my cravat. The fatal moment seems to be approaching! My nether garments give way—I place a finger on each trigger. When all at once a shriek is heard, such a shriek as only a locomotive with its breath of fire can send forth from its iron-bound breast; and which was prolonged from echo to echo like claps of thunder rolling down a valley.

CHAPTER III.

I am attacked with delirium.—I set out on a journey of discovery in the dead of night.—I encounter a boa, and a bat with gigantic wings.—I reach the sea shore.—Simplicity of the oyster; acuteness of the Ape.—I hoist a signal, and then fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.

I open my eyes and perceive this crowd of apes all flying off, in the same direction, with the rapidity of a cannon-ball. Thousands upon thousands of tails streak the horizon. These at length disappear, and fainter and fainter grows that chattering noise with which they have sought to excite one another to triple their speed, till at last it sounds merely like a tingling in the ear when one is troubled with a rush of blood to the head. The air is pure, the earth has already recovered its serenity, as after the disappearance of some fetid mist; I spring to my feet, I breathe freely, I feel as though I were born again! But whence came this marvellous shriek? and what strange creature had given utterance to it? Was it a leopard wounded to death? Was it merely some amorous tiger? Was it a human being? No, it could not have been. And how came it, too, to be so generally comprehended? How was I to discover this? Of whom could I inquire? Silence and solitude had in the twinkling of an eye taken the place of the frightful tumult and the savage and grotesque scenes of a few moments before, but did this shriek signal the fall of the curtain, or merely the conclusion of an act of the drama? Was it, in plain words, an end or only a momentary suspension—this spontaneous dispersion of all the monsters, who had left me as it were by a miracle? Night was approaching; in fact, it had already set in. What was I to do? What was to become of me in the midst of this scattered colony, among unknown hordes which my imagination pictured as only the more frightful, the longer they delayed to show themselves!

I might remain very well where I was till the next day, but had I not reason to fear the return of my enemies, who would reappear more determined than ever to torment me with their inexhaustible tricks, and more particularly so now that they knew how much my superior they were both in boldness and strength? On the other hand, where could I go without encountering the risk of being devoured by the thousands of wild animals which doubtless lay crouching, swollen with rage, within the shadow of these almost impenetrable jungles?

The waverings of my mind brought on a burning fever, which caused my brain to throb, like the booming of a large bell, or the roaring of the billows breaking upon a rocky shore, and made me fancy at times that I could hear sounds similar to those which come from great centres of population; such, indeed, as I had heard in the neighbourhood of Goa and Macao. Shipwrecked people, it is well known, have these singular hallucinations. They are like clocks which have been set wrong, and keep on going—the hands traversing the dial, but no longer marking the correct time—and which strike at hazard.

During the continuance of this delirium, a bright red streak all at once tinted the horizon, dividing it like a cut made with a knife in the rind of a pomegranate. Suddenly this crimson line appeared to be swollen at a particular point, and a globe of fire rose majestically in the sky. It was the moon, which was nearly at the full. I believed that it was rising for me alone, so much calm did it seem to bring me, while enveloping me with its beautiful light. I took courage. My blood flowed more tranquilly through my veins. I reasoned on my situation with sequence and lucidity, and proved to myself that there was no serious reason for my remaining any longer in the place where I then was. My resolution was soon taken, and I proceeded to arm myself with the stoutest bamboo I could find on the border of the lake, to serve me for a defensive weapon in case of necessity. I then set about to determine whether this vast sheet of limpid water, which was spread before me, had, as was probably the case, some outlet through which it emptied itself into the sea. To be enlightened on this geographical problem was of the utmost importance to me.

Large sheets of water, although there are notable exceptions in Oceania, generally fall into the sea; if the lake therefore, on the banks of which I then was, had an important outlet, I was certain, by following the course of it step by step, to arrive at the sea. And as it is rarely the case that there are not certain spots on the banks of these streams where the native population, guided by the instinct of want, have raised their huts, I was equally certain to meet with these villages on my way. To discover this outlet I determined, if necessary, to make the circuit of the lake without deviating at all in my course, spite of the jungles which threatened to prevent me. After walking for about an hour a confused noise suddenly brought me to a standstill. I listened, then hastened in the direction whence the sound proceeded, and found it gradually growing more and more distinct, until at length I recognised the murmur of a considerable cascade. What I was in search of was evidently here. The waters of the lake fell into a second and lower basin which, growing narrower a little further on, became the stream on which I had counted. I followed the course of this natural canal, but not without encountering strange difficulties by the way. It was not an easy thing, as one may well believe, to continue walking for any length of time along a bank composed of spongy vegetable remains, on which it was altogether impossible to place one’s feet without sinking up to the knees, and which was at times entirely hidden by a layer of fibrous shoots, creepers, bamboos, and mimosas interwoven and crossed one over another with so much tenacity that they formed a kind of archway, beneath which I was forced to pass by, crawling along on my hands and knees. It was in one of these dark tunnels, while placing my hands on the ground so as to draw myself along, that I seized hold of something round and slippery and cold as ice, whilst, at the same moment, a wing struck me in the face, producing a double sensation of horror. The cold, round, slippery thing was a serpent; the blow on my face was caused by a hideous bat with slimy wings three or four feet in breadth. I still shudder when I think of this frightful meeting.

For several hours I advanced thus towards an unknown goal, feeling more and more persuaded, as I proceeded, that the portion of the island already traversed by me, under the perilous conditions which I have just endeavoured to relate, was not inhabited, unless, indeed, it happened to contain other lakes and water-courses, a probability which was extremely doubtful, considering the small extent of the islands composing the group, in the centre of which I had been shipwrecked. I concluded, therefore, that no inhabitant of the island was likely to be met with at any considerable distance from this stream, along which, so far as I had traced its course, there were no signs of human habitations to be seen. I concluded, moreover, from a parity of reasoning, that the island did not contain many wild beasts, since, as is well known from the testimony of travellers and naturalists, they frequent by preference the muddy banks of rivers, where they are certain to find, during the heat of the day, coolness, shade, and, above all, numerous prey for which they lie in wait, and, during the night, almost inaccessible retreats to which they can retire.

When I perceived above me the open sky, and some leagues of clear ground, both to my right hand and my left, the day was beginning to break. The violent exertion I had undergone, joined to the sudden freshness of the air, and the lightness of my yesterday’s repast, since fruit, however good and luscious it may be, is scarcely sufficiently satisfying to stomachs accustomed to the endless variety of food—the result of a high state of civilisation—had made me as ravenous as a tiger. I have never regretted so much as I then did, that Providence had not reserved to us, for seasons of difficulty, the means of living on grass and plants like animals of the herbivorous species, or endowed us like others with the faculty of seizing our prey. In the primitive ages of the world we were endowed perhaps with a less exclusive organisation; but, however this may have been, I was dying with hunger in the midst of a paradise of plants, ferns, and roots, which a horse or an ox would have considered the rarest of delicacies. Whilst I was absorbed in these reflections, it was gradually becoming lighter; objects began to stand out from the background of delicate violet, tinted with yellow, which is the forerunner of dawn in Oceania and southern China. A cool wind swept across the earth, the sharpness and tempering quality of which convinced me that it had already passed over the sea, which I would have wagered my existence was not far distant. Other signs confirmed me in my belief; the trees were neither so thick together nor so large; the heath, which was more stunted in its growth, was gradually becoming more scanty. When the sun showed itself above the horizon, I had only to exclaim, “There is the sea!” and I very soon did so.

The sea was scarcely two hundred yards from me when I first caught sight of its tiny waves—the same waves that were yesterday so furious—whitening a complete bend of the shore. Supposing some degree of regularity in the form of the island, this bend would give it, according to my calculations, a circumference of thirty leagues. Moreover, admitting, what I was satisfied of from observation, that the journey I had made during the night was half the diameter of the entire island, that is, five leagues, which is the average size of the islands of this group. After having assured myself that the one half of the island was uninhabited along the banks of the stream which I had already traversed, I still entertained a hope that I might meet with a village on the sea-shore the inhabitants of which might possibly be fishermen, a common enough profession among the Malays; or they might perhaps do a little trade by means of barter, which is a much less common profession; or they might be pirates, a profession which is usually joined to all others in these savage regions.

I commenced my excursion along the sea-shore, in spite of the fatigue which I was suffering. I knew that I had no time to lose, since, if the sun once rose in the heavens, its intense heat would render all bodily exertion impossible in this torrid zone, for at least ten hours to come.

If for the first three miles I discovered no more traces of the island being inhabited than I had met with during the previous evening, I could scarcely doubt that my good friends the apes often visited this locality. I recognised them by these signs. Thousands of oysters were spread upon the beach; and at least two layers of these oysters had been opened—not naturally, but with the aid of a little stone placed between the two shells. Who had done this? Why, my apes, of course. It is well known that oysters are a precious luxury to the entire monkey tribe, who are obliged to be very cunning in procuring themselves this treat, which is not without its attendant dangers. How do you suppose they manage this? Why, by throwing a stone between the two shells, at the precise moment that the oyster chances to gape; in this manner they are sure of their prey, without having to make an exhibition of themselves with their hands or their muzzles caught in the powerful grip of the oyster, who has the preservative faculty of closing his shell directly he is seized hold of.

As oysters furnish a far more substantial dish than any quantity of tropical fruit, and as my plundering and wasteful apes had opened more of these delicacies than they had consumed, I commenced my repast with a joyful heart. These bivalves were hardly equal to real Whitstable natives, or even to the oysters of Ostend; nevertheless, five or six dozen were rapidly devoured. A tankard of bitter ale would have been an acceptable accompaniment; but as this was not to be had, I was forced to content myself with bumpers of pure water, quaffed from the palm of my hand. My appetite was no sooner appeased than, contrary to what is usual under similar circumstances, my troubles of mind returned. Was I, I again asked myself, about to be brought face to face with the inhabitants of this island, either at the curve of some bay, or behind some projecting mass of rock? Filled with this hope—or rather, with this fear—I recommenced my explorations. But, after having ascended many creeks, many little gulfs, on the banks of which the banyans displayed their rich green foliage, I not only met with not a single inhabitant, neither black, brown, yellow, nor copper-coloured—but, during the long journey which I had performed, from five o’clock in the morning until noon, at which hour the burning heat poured down by the sun on my poor head forced me to halt, I had seen neither junk, nor canoe, nor any kind of implement, no fragments of articles in common use among beings of the slightest intelligence; in a word, no single trace of man.

As it was impossible to remain for any length of time, at this hour of the day, on this exposed coast, burnt up, as I was, by the sun, I deemed it prudent to proceed a short distance inland. On leaving the shore, I gathered, some hundred yards off, a stick of bamboo, the straightest and tallest I could find; and, after having stripped it of its leaves, I fastened to the end of it one of the two white handkerchiefs which I had about me at the moment of abandoning the junk, and planted it firmly in the sand. If some vessel should perceive this signal—of which there was, I feared, but little chance, the island being surrounded on all sides by reefs—it would be advised of the presence of an unfortunate castaway, and would, perhaps, make an effort to take him off.

The rude blows of the day before, the extraordinary fatigues of the night, the mental troubles of all kinds which I had undergone during the past three days, rendered that sleep which I hastened to enjoy under the tamarind trees that grew between the sea and the more wooded part of the island, most welcome to me. My eyes closed with an unspeakable pleasure. My drowsiness resembled the calm of an aërial voyage. The sea-breeze passed in long gusts through my hair, after having swept over my body, and refreshed and revivified all my limbs. The mixture of the strong vegetable odours by which I was surrounded with the salt air of the sea, charged, as it was, with all the mysterious exhalations of the Indian Ocean, formed a perfume, at once so agreeable and so intoxicating, that I was conscious of its influence even in my sleep.

I must have slept for a long time, since the sun, which was at his zenith when I laid down, was precisely at the same point of the heavens when I awoke, so that I had slept for four-and-twenty hours. My awakening will never be effaced from my remembrance as long as I live, owing to a circumstance which I recollect with sorrow and regret, and with some degree of remorse.

CHAPTER IV.

I have a very agitated dream.—During my waking moments I unconsciously commit a murder.—At night time I encounter a strange apparition in the middle of the forest.—A great light illumines the air.—I advance towards it, buoyed up with hope.—It suddenly disappears.—The dawn discloses to me a most singular sight.—I witness the proceedings of a court-martial the members composing which have each four hands.—Disgraceful corruption of justice.—Ridiculous parody on the manners and institutions of the human race.

I had a dream during my sleep. In this dream I found myself in the midst of those same horrid apes from whom I had so miraculously escaped the day before. I was still in their power! Nothing seemed changed, neither the scene nor the actors. The lake lay spread before me; the trees rose up and waved upon its banks; the leaves and fruit, which had been broken off by the stones, covered the ground. My two redoubtable ourang-outangs had not left me; one was still at my feet, the other at my head. They continued those persecutions of which my unfortunate garments were the theatre. After having torn them in pieces through tugging at them and attempting to pull them off the wrong way, they had uncovered my breast; and, after a minute examination of my skin, directed their attention to my ribs, which they evidently wished to force apart so as to see what they inclosed. With the view of solving this problem each of them possessed himself of a large stone, and made preparations to break me open, a proceeding to which they usually have recourse when they desire to devour the inside of a tortoise or cocoa-nut. Two large stones were already suspended over my breast; self-preservation before everything, thought I, and fired at one of the two ourang-outangs and killed him; I am about to fire at the other, when the noise of the first shot woke me up. On awakening, I find myself in a perfect rage, almost mad with anger, and with a pistol grasped in my hand. A group of apes are by my side; I point my pistol, touch the trigger, one of them is hit, and falls. May the Almighty, in His goodness, ever preserve me and mine from another night like this! The poor ape, who was no terrible ourang-outang like that of my dream, but a peaceful vervet, dragged himself bleeding to my feet. He was mortally wounded a little below the heart. Not wishing to prolong his sufferings, I seized him by the tail, and, swinging him round like a stone in a sling, dashed his head against a tree. The unfortunate vervet was still alive. With what a touching glance he appealed to me as he licked my hands, as though begging me not to put him to death, and prayed to me with low, plaintive cries which I can still hear! In order to put him the quicker out of his misery, I ran with him to the beach and plunged him into the sea till he was suffocated. During this time, which appeared to me as long as if I were undergoing the same tortures myself, his poor little eyes continued to follow mine; his dying looks were at once a reproach and a prayer. Were I to live a hundred years, this picture, in which suffering had elevated the instinct of the brute to the level of the cruel intelligence of man, would never be effaced from my memory. And these lines, which I have written with an aching heart, are some kind of punishment for my needless crime, for this poor ape had done no harm whatever to me.

Later I remembered what Buffon says of the vervet, “that it is one of the most lively and amusing of apes; is scarcely as large as a cat; and has a brown body, with flesh-coloured face and ears. The vervets are fantastic in their tastes and affections, appearing to have a strong inclination for some persons and a great aversion to others.”

I was far more distressed at my cruel action, although I hardly need have been, since I had killed the vervet while I was still stupefied by sleep and under the influence of a dream. When I returned to the place whence I had fired the pistol, I was grieved to discover that the shot which had killed one vervet had, unfortunately, wounded another of the group into the midst of which I had so recklessly fired. All the other apes belonging to the same species had assembled round their wounded companion, and were placing their fingers in his wound, as though they wished to probe it. While some kept it open, others brought leaves which they chewed and gently placed in the wound itself. This last act upset all my preconceived ideas with regard to the intelligence of these animals, so badly treated, by some naturalists, who have confounded inferior kinds with species like those of the vervets, that almost approach our own, falling into the same error as that ignorant observer who placed in the same rank, under the pretext that they were both men, the cretin of the Alps and the admirably-organised inhabitant of Italy or Greece. Since this example of apes rendering one another mutual help in time of danger, and nursing one another with the aid of special remedies known only to themselves, has frequently come before my eyes, I have not hesitated to relate one instance of which I was an eye-witness, in the hope of making the reader share the surprise and interest which it awakened in me.

My poor apes at length retired, carrying with them their wounded companion, and leaving me one sorrow more to add to those which already oppressed me. I spent a miserable day, haunted by remorse for my crime. I could not banish from my mind the piteous expression of these poor animals, and the mingled look of goodness, gentleness, suffering, and resignation imprinted in their features, so utterly distinct from those of other apes, from whom they appeared completely separated, not by the mere effect of chance, or by the boundary which the difference of genius had raised between them.

When night came on I had already left the actors and the theatre of these events far behind me. About midnight, on hearing, in a wood of mimosas, and seemingly quite close to me, an indefinable rustling, such as the dry husks of the bread-tree produce when driven about by the wind, I remembered all at once that I had forgotten to reload my pistols. Before proceeding another step I charged them with ball, and advanced cautiously towards the spot whence the noise appeared to proceed. I approached slowly on tiptoe, holding my breath, and with my heart beating violently, as I gently pushed aside the thorny branches of the mimosas, and raised them again with the same prudent caution. I stretched forth my neck, and by the light of the moon, which shone as brightly as on the preceding evening, I perceived a skeleton suspended from the branch of a tree—a skeleton, too, of huge size: its bones, which were white as ivory, stood out from the dark green leaves with a power of relief which added considerably to the terror of its aspect. As I watched it swinging to and fro in the wind, the sensation which I experienced was by no means an agreeable one, and a nervous shudder passed through my limbs. Eventually I reasoned with myself, and decided not to draw too sinister a conclusion from a circumstance which perhaps, after all, did not partake of that degree of atrocity that my imagination had hastily pictured.

I now walked boldly up to the skeleton, and sought to catch hold of its foot, but the foot proved to be a hand. The skeleton was evidently that of an ape—an ape, too, of the largest kind; in other words, a gigantic mandrill. Yes, a mandrill—that enemy of the baboon with whom it shares the empire of ferocity and terror. I considered, from the size of the skeleton, that the ape to which it belonged must have surpassed, in size and strength, all known examples of this formidable species. But how came he to be suspended here, I asked myself? And why was it that his skin had been entirely removed? Not the least fragment of it was to be seen at the foot of the tree. Had he been flayed after being hung, and had his death then been stamped with all the forms of a degrading punishment?

As my reflections, under the shadow of this improvised gibbet, failed to produce any kind of solution of the above enigma, I hastened to leave the spot, pondering over in my mind as to the proportion of apes and men occupying this spot of earth in the midst of the sea. One will easily comprehend that my mind was constantly indulging in speculations—first of all as to the probability of the island being inhabited, and then as to the particular kind of people who dwelt therein.

Whilst I was asking myself these questions for the thousandth time, as I walked straight on without knowing whither I was going, it seemed to me that the light of the moon underwent, for some minutes, a notable diminution. What, thought I, could possibly be the cause of this? I raised my head. The moon’s disk was really clouded by a reddish mist, slightly tinted with grey. This mist was evidently not a cloud. Moreover, in so pure an atmosphere, a cloud, the sign of wind and tempest, would have passed over much higher in the sky. At one time it seemed so low that it occurred to me it was some exhalation from the lake, a vapour produced by the vast collections of vegetable remains accumulated on its margin. To put an end to my doubts on this score, I climbed up a tree, and there I discovered—victory and release from my enforced captivity—that it was the smoke from a fire burning in the interior of the island. A fire! The island was undoubtedly inhabited, then—inhabited, too, by human beings, since man alone can procure himself fire, man alone knows how to use it, and man alone has need of it. I was then among beings of my own kind. I was saved—or perhaps lost! Nevertheless it was a fact that I was among members of the human family. Acting on this conviction, I thought it only prudent to slip a second bullet into each of my pistols.

Collecting together all my scattered faculties, I imposed upon them the task of guiding me in the direction in which I supposed this fire to be, and the object of which was now a source of some anxiety to me. Did it indicate one of those extraordinary conflagrations, in producing which the savages of Oceania have frequently no other motive beyond destroying, in a few hours, vast tracts of forests, that they may gratify themselves with a most sublime sight? Did it betray the presence of a band of pirates, arrived perhaps in the island during this very evening, and sharing their booty by the light of some immense fire which they had kindled in accordance with their prevailing habits of destruction? Did it indicate the chief settlement of the native population, who, during the hours of universal silence, were giving themselves up to certain wild rejoicings, or were engaged in consummating some nocturnal sacrifice under the mysterious light of the moon?

The hope that I was at length about to find myself among members of the human family was dimmed by the reflection that these men would certainly not be finished models of civilisation, for I was not ignorant of the fact that many islands of Oceania have been, since the creation of the world, and are likely to continue for a long time to come, nothing more than nests of cannibals. Cannibals, however, do not always eat people any more than serpents always sting them, so there was, at any rate, one chance in my favour out of something like a score of chances against me. Moreover, hope does not reason for itself like fear is apt to do.

Without stopping to admire the magnificence of the night, magnificent even to me, accustomed as I was to the incomparable nights of the southern hemisphere; without lending an ear to the different harmonies composed of notes of a character utterly unknown to me, since it must not be forgotten that every island of Oceania is a world apart, a complete universe in itself, often having its flowers, its plants, its birds, its reptiles, and its human occupants, different from the men, reptiles, birds, plants, and flowers of the island adjoining; without pausing to examine anything, no matter however strange or ravishing, I continued to advance in a straight line towards that part of the island where I thought the fire which I had seen from afar must be burning.

At the end of three long hours I discovered it was by no means so easy to arrive at this earnestly desired goal as I had pictured it. The surface of the island being more or less undulating, whenever I descended into a hollow, or had to cross some ravine which intercepted my path, I immediately lost sight of the radiant glow which served as a beacon. On several occasions I had to climb to the top of a tall tree before I could make certain that I was pursuing the right direction. Unfortunately the fire was not always maintained at the same degree of intensity, and there was one critical moment when, after climbing to the topmost branches of the tallest tree I could find, I could distinguish nothing but the merest spark. My most ardent prayers were that it might not become totally extinguished before the break of day, but my supplications were of no avail. The fire flickered for a moment or two, and then went out. I could now only guide myself by certain signs; I was already in the midst of a sea of creepers, with which the ground was carpeted, and I had to pass through fibres of bamboo more or less impenetrable for a depth of at least forty feet, and then, what long circuits I should have to take!

A discovery which I made at this moment went far to counterbalance the discouragement I had just experienced on finding the light which I had pursued with so much tenacity extinguished. This discovery affected me considerably.

Soon after quitting the marshy plain of bamboos, from which I only emerged after leaving some portions of my dress and skin as traces of my path, I found myself once more on solid ground. While passing between the numerous shrubs which covered it, and gave it the appearance of a vast natural orchard, I came across some tempting-looking fruit. By chance, I tasted it, and discovered from its flavour that it was evidently the produce of a regular system of culture. There was none of that primitive harshness which all fruits as a general rule possess till man has improved their flavour. This discovery was a further convincing proof to me that the island was inhabited. It reassured me and encouraged me in my hopes, since it was not only certain that the island was inhabited, but that it was inhabited by men skilled in agricultural pursuits, and consequently occupying no mean place in the scale of civilisation.

At length the dawn appeared; the sky was scarcely lighted up by the first rays of the rising sun ere the uproar which I had heard during the three preceding days again rent the air. These frightful noises, indistinct at first, afterwards comprised all the various gradations that belong to the voices of wild animals, from the hypocritical and nervous mewing of the tiger and the guttural howling of the hyena to the most piercing shrieks and the shrillest whistlings. I started with affright at the explosion of these horrible sounds, which seemed to spring from the depths of a vast glade, which all at once opened out before me. It was like a battery, suddenly unmasked, discharging all its guns at once. Without knowing what it was that I sought to avoid, I darted on one side and hid myself behind the trunk of a tree, bowed down to the ground and covered with a thick mantle of moss and leaves.

The day, which in these inflammable zones does not steal on by degrees, but bursts forth all at once into noon, filled the glade with its dazzling light; and through the numerous openings in the trees I beheld a sight which would seem to the reader altogether improbable, did I not propose, further on, to bring forward the testimony of one of the most celebrated German naturalists in support of my statement.

In a vast arena, a group of individuals, clad in red coats and with cocked hats—surmounted by plumes of feathers, such as English officers wear—on their heads, were seated on some rising ground, evidently in grave deliberation, as though holding a kind of court-martial. In the midst of this conclave I caught sight of a commanding-looking figure, also clothed in scarlet, whose head and face were almost hidden beneath the ample shade of a gigantic cocked hat.

The reader is certainly about to share my surprise. These individuals were apes. Yes, apes. Again, and always, apes. But why were they dressed out in garments in which one is unaccustomed to see them in their natural state? Where had they procured these martial-looking coats and these formidable cocked hats? These were riddles impossible to solve; it must be left to the course of events to bring about an explanation.

The apes composing this group were siamangs, a redoubtable species, who are, as Buffon says, among the largest of quadrumanous animals, approaching the baboon in size.

These siamangs were presided over by the big ape who wore the admiral’s hat. And he was a baboon. One could not be mistaken on this point, and I above all, for was not Karabouffi the Second—Karabouffi the incendiary—a baboon? How came it that at this moment I seemed to see in the person of the president of the court-martial the very image of this treacherous monster?

“The ourang-outang,” says Buffon in his admirable work, “the ape who most resembles man, is the most intelligent, the gravest, and most docile of all apes. The magot, which, with its muzzle and dog-like fangs, diverges from the human form and approaches that of animals, is rough, disobedient, and slovenly; while baboons, which only resemble man by their hands, and have tails, sharp claws, and large nostrils, have the air of ferocious beasts, and what is more, do not belie their looks.”

Around this hideous tribunal, and ranged in triple and quadruple circles, I noticed a crowd of apes of different kinds, but all of the very worst species, and all, moreover, clad, if one can call it clad, or adorned, if one can call it adorned, with some portion of the costume of an English officer, either of the army or navy. One had, for instance, a hat splendidly got up, with a most superb plume of feathers, but he had no red coat to set it off with; another had a red coat, but no trousers; a third, on the contrary, had white trousers, but neither red coat nor belt; a fourth had a belt and nothing else; a fifth was distinguished only by a pair of white gloves, in which he placed sometimes his hands, and sometimes his feet, or rather what represent feet in an ape; a sixth had passed his arms through the sleeves of a midshipman’s blue jacket, but with so little good luck, that the garment was hind-part before; another wore an enormous gorget, which made him carry his head in the air like a tambour major; whilst his neighbour, more favoured by fortune, or perhaps holding a higher rank, for I was of course ignorant of the precise significance of the various military trappings worn by these creatures with a gravity which at that moment astonished me a hundred times more than the ordinary extravagances of their fellows; whilst his neighbour, as I was saying, wore golden epaulettes on a cavalry colonel’s coat. And this costume would not have become him so very badly, had it not been much too large for him, and capable, indeed, of containing at least half-a-dozen colonels of his particular bulk. A sort of finish was given to his uniform by a pair of white gloves and a military sash with silk and gold fringe. If no one of these apes displayed on his own person a complete example of military costume, many at least among them exhibited special portions of it, and I should state that all were armed with a large sabre or a sword.

I should certainly fall far short of the truth if I attempted to describe my impressions at the sight of this insulting burlesque of one of the most honourable of professions—at the sight of these masquerade officers, every one of whom trailed after him a tail which looked all the more ludicrous, peeping out as it did from under his long coat—at the sight of those generals who amused themselves with minute investigations of the heads of their colleagues, not, however, for phrenological purposes, whilst their colleagues considerately rendered them the same service.

At this moment a frightful guttural cry burst forth from the breast of the big baboon who occupied the president’s place, and all those incongruities on which I had been speculating were in an instant forgotten. There was silence for some minutes, and I endeavoured to profit by it by putting my ideas—fearfully strained by all that I had seen—a little in order. But the effort was a useless one. I asked myself to no purpose for an explanation of the strange society assembled before me; I knew well enough that I was not dreaming, like I was the day before, when I fancied myself about to be assassinated by the two ourang-outangs.

It was not the order which I found reigning among these numerous apes assembled, as I fancied them to be, in court-martial, that caused me the most astonishment, since I remembered what that illustrious naturalist, Marcgrave, says—it was the sight of these hats on their brainless heads, these coats on their ridiculous backs, that awakened in me the greatest surprise; for how was it possible to account for the noble military uniform being prostituted to such base uses as these?

While he was speaking, these unfortunate wretches trembled all over, from head to foot.—[Page 63.]

“Every day,” observes Marcgrave in his natural history, “morning and evening, the siamangs assemble in the woods. One among them takes up his position on some rising ground, and makes a sign to the others to seat themselves around him. When he sees that they are all properly placed, he commences speaking so loud and fast that at a distance a person would imagine they were all crying out together. Yet only one among them is speaking; the others preserve the most perfect silence. When the speaker has finished, he makes a sign with his hand for the others to reply to him, whereupon, at the same instant, they all commence shouting out together, creating, as may be supposed, the most perfect din until, by another sign with his hand, the ape who opened the discussion commands them to silence. In a moment they obey him, and are silent as death. The first one then resumes his speech, and it is only after having listened to him most attentively to the end of his oration that they take steps to break up the assembly.”

The president of the conclave, the big baboon, decked out in the admiral’s or general’s hat, by a single movement of his hand, ordered the advance of twenty apes, who, I observed, were securely bound with ropes made of some fibrous bark. When they were ranged before him like so many criminals, he addressed them in a succession of cries similar to those which I had just heard, but modulated in some degree, as though intended to give expression to certain positive ideas. While he was speaking, these unfortunate wretches trembled all over, from head to foot, and no sooner had he concluded, than, apparently driven to desperation, they endeavoured to escape. Vain attempt! Other apes, armed with knotty bamboos, which they did not hesitate to use, guarded every outlet.

I was not long in discovering that these apes, on whom the assembly were evidently sitting in judgment, belonged to the same species as my unfortunate victim of the previous day. They were vervets, and were distinguished from their judges by their more delicately-shaped limbs, their more intelligent-looking heads, and, above all, by a certain air of goodness and amiability, which was no doubt a crime in the eyes of those by whom they had just been condemned.

And what frightful-looking fellows were their judges, who formed what may be styled the supreme court of the big baboon! How they sought to read beforehand in their master’s eyes the opinion which they would be permitted to hold! Although some among them were already bald, and others displayed the white hair of old age, that natural sign of prudence and badge of respect, they did not the less rival their fellows in obsequiousness towards their master. If he chanced to utter a cry, they were the apes that, in the fullness of their sympathy, cried the loudest. If he scratched his thigh, in a moment of deep thought, they hastened to almost flay their legs by tearing at them with their claws.

Touched with so many marks of abject humility, the august baboon would every now and then take from one of the side pouches of his mouth a mass of masticated nuts or fruit, and throw it into the faces of those servile officials who surrounded him, and who, regarding the act as a mark of gracious condescension on his part, received it with the most lively contortions of pleasure.

Some old ourang-outangs, who had formerly lived with the incriminated vervets, being, I am convinced, on the point of pronouncing a decision in the prisoners’ favour, what do you think the big baboon did, as soon as he perceived the first indication of this misplaced pity of theirs? He rolled his vulture-like eyes under his puckered eyelids, and showed his horrible gums behind a smile formed by two wrinkled lips, and in an instant the misplaced clemency of the old ourang-outangs utterly vanished.

The baboon now threw his staff of justice into the middle of the arena. This it seems was intended as a signal, for immediately afterwards the apes, to whom were delegated the functions of carrying out the sentences pronounced by the supreme court, commenced showering down blows with sticks of bamboo on the poor condemned prisoners, whom they thrashed with an unheard-of severity, driving them clean out of the inclosure and chasing them at last into the very depths of the forest.

This savage act of justice appeared to me as though it were chiefly intended to increase the authority which the big baboon evidently exercised over the apish community, since no sooner was the sitting concluded than the siamangs, magots, and talapoins rushed forward to congratulate him, to stroke and lick him, to jump upon his back and salute him with respect, mingled with fear.

CHAPTER V.

The court-martial breaks up.—I secretly follow the members of it.—I distinguish some houses between the trees, and believe myself to be at last among my fellow-men.—My hopes are crushed by discovering the devastated condition of the settlement.—I meet with Saïmira and Mococo, the latter in captivity.—I recognise in the president of the court-martial one of my two baboons of Macao.—This discovery troubles me, the more so when I find that Karabouffi’s power is supreme.—Foreseeing the peril I should be in if recognised by him, I hide myself in a grotto.—I am visited by Saïmira.—Weariness becomes at length more intolerable than danger.—The light already seen reappears.—I leave my retreat in search of it.

When the big baboon was thoroughly tired of these attentions he waved his hand by way of signal for his followers to desist, then rose majestically, and, accompanied by his entire suite, proceeded to take his departure.

I could not refrain from following the party, although by so doing I felt that I exposed myself to a certain danger. I advanced, however, cautiously, step by step, and from tree to tree, halting when necessary, so that I might not be discovered. This gave me time to examine the spot where justice had just been meted out, and I was surprised to perceive at no great distance from it, through a wide opening between the trees, a nest of little painted houses, constructed in the Indian style, and such as I had frequently seen in Java, Borneo, and generally in all the more civilised parts of Oceania. Houses! I was then about to find myself, not among a people more or less anthropophagical, but among a people far advanced in civilisation; without doubt some European colony, and what is more, an English one, since the coats worn by that legion of apes were of English cut, colour, and nationality. I now walked with restored confidence behind my apes, clad in their blue and red toggery. Now and for henceforth I need have no more fear of them. I felt almost inclined to twitch their garments and seize hold of their despised tails by way of amusement.

After this discovery I fully expected to see ere long this troop of apes re-enter their cages under the guiding influence of their master’s whip. With this view I hid myself lower down the road in a sort of thicket. “From my hiding-place,” I said to myself, “I shall be able to see this diabolical procession defile before me with the big baboon at the head of it.” After a time they pass by, and what do I see? Whom do you think I recognise under the hat adorned with such a splendid plume of feathers and in the red coat, the brilliancy of which almost scorched my eyes? Why, my terrible baboon of Macao; he whom I had so many times thrashed, whom I had sold a year previously to Vice-Admiral Campbell the day before his departure—in one word, Karabouffi! Karabouffi the First! Could it be possible? In this case the admiral must have disembarked his men on this island. Were he and his crew still here? A new surprise put an end to my speculations. I find myself at this moment gently touched on the arm, and on turning round see beside me a well-remembered figure, who is tenderly regarding me. That look, which seemed to spring from the depth of a human soul, came from the eyes of Saïmira, my charming chimpanzee, who endeavoured anew to make me comprehend that I was to follow her by again pulling me by the arm, accompanying this movement with a significant gesture. Finding that I still resisted she uttered several low groans, and commenced licking my hands. She had, one might say, spoken first, and begged afterwards. I no longer doubted that I was running some great danger from which she wished to save me. I therefore decided to follow her, and no sooner did she perceive my intention than her joy was intense. As we walked side by side through the bushes she looked at me, and lowered her head. I divined her meaning, and inclined mine. It was evidently dangerous for me to be seen. After a quarter of an hour of this silent marching through the tall brushwood we arrived at a spot which I fancied to be in the rear of the houses seen by me from afar, and the sight of which had inspired me with such joy and confidence. Saïmira stood still. What could be her object? It was to show me on her left a row of cages, of which all, except one, were open and empty. Saïmira went up to the closed cage, and then returned, and drew me towards it. I looked through the bars, and there saw my old friend Mococo, the chimpanzee, whom I had sold with Saïmira on the day of my great sale to Vice-Admiral Campbell.

My first act was to open the door of the cage that I might behold my old favourite free. No sooner is he free than poor Mococo hesitated whether to go to Saïmira or to me, whom he at once recognised. His affections are divided. At last he runs up to me, and rests his head for several seconds upon my neck just like a little child. After having passed his hands gently over my face, and rubbed his muzzle against my cheeks, he threw himself on the ground, and laid his trembling paw on Saïmira’s neck, whilst Saïmira, in her turn, placed her hand on him. The most affectionate confidences were then exchanged between these two creatures, who had evidently suffered much from their hard separation, since one was free and the other a captive.

This affecting scene lasted for well-nigh a quarter of an hour, when all at once Saïmira raised her ear with anxiety, and drew it back ruffled with fright. With a rapid movement she thrust Mococo back into his cage again, and giving me a glance, which I was at no loss to comprehend, since I had known for a long time how to interpret the signs of these animals, and by which I understood her to implore me to draw the bolt quickly on the poor prisoner. I of course did so. She had evidently heard a noise. I listened and heard it also, and recognised in it the hoarse grunting of Karabouffi.

Saïmira’s terror, which was evidently inspired by the too close proximity of the big baboon, convinced me that it was he who held Mococo captive. I also suspected from this circumstance that Karabouffi was at once the conqueror and ruler of the island on which it had been my misfortune to be cast. What part then did my own species play in relation to this mysterious society, in which, day by day, I found myself more and more entangled?

Poor Saïmira was, of course, incapable of enlightening me. All that her affection for me suggested was to draw me away, so that I might avoid encountering Karabouffi the First. When, therefore, she led the way I followed her again. The road which she took was directly opposite to that by which one might have reasonably expected the baboon would come.

We doubled one corner of the row of houses whilst he turned the other on his way to pay a visit to the cage of his rival—now his prisoner. The day began to grow dim. We walked without being observed past the front of the houses which I had believed to be those of the English station, and which looked so pleasant when seen at a distance. A nearer view, however, brought to light a scene of desolation that promised a new surprise to me. In the first place, the windows were all broken, and the frames demolished, and, more or less, wrenched away from their hinges.

Hanging out, at the end of long sticks and a crowd of flag-staffs, from the broken windows of the first story, was a most miscellaneous collection of articles—torn uniforms, leathern stocks, cravats, boots, belts, odd pairs of shoes, hats with their tops torn out, empty bottles, trousers, towels, rags of all colours, any number of shirts, and even a few flags.

In Heaven’s name, I mentally exclaimed, who has committed these acts of incredible folly? Who has produced this utter devastation, the like of which is only to be met with after the sacking of a town, or a raid on the part of a horde of savages?

It is not possible, thought I, that the apes—though the effects of their claws and their perversity were visible everywhere—could have made themselves masters, either by surprise or force, of a garrison composed of brave sailors and excellent officers; that they could have massacred every living man among them, and have then installed themselves in their dwellings and appropriated all their uniforms, furniture, and flags.

Saïmira’s pressing solicitations to me to proceed prevented me from continuing my reflections, and ere many minutes had elapsed she and I had disappeared in the dense shade of a neighbouring wood, where we walked for more than three hours under the dark leaves of the banyans.

It was only after having seen me take refuge in a natural grotto formed of rocks clothed with thick moss and those thousand vegetable productions which cover the ground of Australia, that Saïmira decided to leave me. But before she departed, she gave me a look full of fear and compassion, an eloquent farewell, which I interpreted into an express recommendation to me not to leave my retreat.

Why did I not follow this advice? Simply because, after eight days’ seclusion in the grotto, I grew tired of it, and not even Saïmira’s attentive care, although she came to see me every day, could reconcile me to it. I shall never forget the efforts she made to raise her intelligence in some degree to the level of my own. She would caress me, would now and then sleep with her two little arms twined round my neck, or while I was asleep myself, would go and gather from the topmost branches of the trees fruit which she would place at the entrance to my retreat.

It was not alone weariness which decided me to leave my place of concealment, where I lived without doubt in security; my dignity as a man also urged me to this course. I was ashamed to be held, as it were, in check by certain inferior creatures, authority over whom nature has delegated to our race. Moreover, to pass my life in this grotto seemed an intolerable idea. I thought to myself that I must leave it some day or other, and that I might just as well leave it at once; and this is how it was I left.

I had been accustomed to roam some distance from my cave after nightfall, both for exercise and to seek for wood-pigeons’ eggs, which I cooked in a hole dug in the sand, at the bottom of which I was accustomed to make up a fire.

The matches which, being a smoker, I had about me when I was shipwrecked, enabled me to kindle a fire whenever I required one. Thanks to the leaden box which contained these matches, the sea water had not injured them in the slightest degree, whilst my tobacco, on the contrary, had suffered much.

On the last evening of my stay in the forest, while standing at the entrance of my grotto, I perceived, some distance off, a fire like that which I had seen the day following my shipwreck. Who is it, I asked myself, that lights up these great fires? It cannot be the work of apes, it must be done by men, and yet I dared no longer believe in their existence on this enigmatical island, since on this point I had been so often deceived. I directed my steps in a straight line towards the fire, which I imagined to be situated somewhere between my grotto and the sacked houses of the English station. In less than an hour-and-a-half’s walking, I found myself getting nearer and nearer to it, and when I was only some hundred paces off from it the ground, till then level, rose in a steep incline. The soil crumbled and rattled under my feet, and I concluded that I had reached the side of a volcano, and that I was walking over the old lava. This, however, did not astonish me, for I knew well enough that in nearly all the islands of Oceania there are volcanoes, either extinct or in a state of eruption. But how was it that I had observed these flames only on two occasions? How was it that they had disappeared to burst forth again after an interval of eight days? This was not in accordance with the usual course of these physical convulsions.

In a few minutes all my uncertainties ceased.

CHAPTER VI.

Finding a volcano.—New peril to which I am exposed.—The merchant is recognised by his old merchandise.—Three guttural cries.—The living garland.—It swings to and fro, and then performs a furious rotatory movement over the crater of a blazing volcano.—My thoughts at this moment.—I am flung to the ground, and swoon away.—On recovering, I am ushered into the presence of Karabouffi the First, whom I find transformed into a bird.—Monkey scribes and living telegraphic communication.

At the summit of the cone which I had just reached a most extraordinary spectacle awaited me. Myriads of apes, silent and immovable until they perceived me, hovered round the crest of the crater of a little volcano, which had evidently not been in a state of eruption for a considerable period.

The flames which it belched forth were, I found, the result of a formidable combustion fed by troops of these creatures, who were busily engaged in throwing into this yawning gulf branches after branches of maple-trees, shrubs torn up by the roots, and heaps of long dry leaves, which they passed from one to the other with incredible rapidity, just as sailors when loading a ship pass from hand to hand the multitude of packages which have to be transferred from the quay to the hold. The fuel, consisting of branches, roots, bark, and leaves, which they were flinging into the opening of the craters came, as I discovered, from a distance. The destruction of trees, and the passage from hand to hand of boughs and bark stripped from them, went on without ceasing. The inexhaustible fire, like the indefatigable arms in motion, never once appeared to slacken. It was almost enough to turn one’s brain to observe the flames lightening up from below thousands of shining eyes, twinkling like electric sparks; to see the agitated beards, the perspiring bodies, the shrivelled countenances, and the twisted legs; to see the hairy arms extend themselves, receive their burthen, and cast it into the crater; and to see, moreover, arranged in an immense circle around these panting workmen, thousands upon thousands of spectators, grave and serious-looking as dervishes adoring fire.

But whom could these horrible apes have seen practise this organised work of destruction, that, following the example set them, they should now continue it as though without the power to desist, like machines which know not how to stop after they have once been set in motion? Chance enlightened me on this point some time afterwards.[1]

[1] Polydorus Marasquin would have been less surprised to see apes act together with this unison of will and thorough unanimity of idea, which seemed to him to belong exclusively to the faculties of man, if he had read the following passage from Kolo’s Description of the Cape of Good Hope:—“This is the manner in which the apes pillage an orchard, a garden, or a vineyard. They set forth on these expeditions in troops; one detachment enters the inclosure, whilst another remains on the watch to give notice of the approach of danger. The remainder are placed outside the garden at a moderate distance from each other, so as to form a sort of line, which stretches from the place of pillage to that appointed for the rendezvous. When all have taken up their positions, the baboons commence the work of pillage, and throw to those who are in waiting just outside the garden the melons, apples, pears, &c., as they gather them; these apes, in their turn, throw the fruit to those stationed nearest to them, and so they are passed along the entire length of the line, which generally ends on the summit of some mountain. If the sentinels perceive any one approaching, they utter a particular cry, at which signal the entire troop will scamper off with astonishing rapidity.”

I have said that all these apes were silent as the grave until they caught sight of me. No sooner, however, did they perceive me than this silence was broken. Callot’s necromantic pencil, or rather his diabolical graver, which gave to us “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” is necessary to depict what happened to me at this ineffaceable moment of my existence.

At first a noise, so much like that of a hurricane that it caused me to throw myself flat on the ground, succeeded to the death-like silence with which these creatures were regarding the sight of the blazing volcano before they were disturbed by my presence.

They were welcoming me.

Their eternal enemy, man, was in their midst.

And a man, too, who had sold apes!

A man who had even sold several of those present when at Macao.

A man who had forced them to beat tambourines and leap through hoops.

A man who had sometimes flogged them to make them dance with a rose behind the ear, a shepherd’s hat on the head, and a crook in the hand.

A man who had also cruelly deprived them of food and drink, because they would not put on scarlet breeches and ruffles, and bow and scrape in the ancient French fashion.

What ought I not to expect?

Karabouffi the First, seated on the block of lava, was presiding over this gathering—as for the matter of that, he presided over everything in this island, which had become subjected, I know not how, to his sovereignty. His ministers, as we have already seen, were only his servants and executioners.

I had been, as I have already said, recognised.

After this bewildering noise of which I have just spoken all my old captives of Macao rushed upon me; their companions hastened to follow their example. I felt that I was about to be torn into as many pieces as my unfortunate cravat.

It was at this moment that I caught sight of the word Halcyon, the name of Vice-Admiral Campbell’s frigate, on the buttons of the coats worn by the leaders of this odious troop. The reader may judge of my astonishment at this discovery. Where was I? In the name of goodness, what had happened?

This I should probably never have known but for the cry uttered by Karabouffi at the very moment that I was disappearing under a mountain of baboons, apes, mandrills, magots, and ourang-outangs.

The thousand and one instantly let go their hold.

Karabouffi evidently had other intentions respecting me.

He uttered three distinct guttural cries, which were listened to with marked attention.

The order had gone forth, it was now about to be executed, and this is the way in which his behest was accomplished:—

On a signal from Karabouffi, these drolls of creation joined themselves together like bundles of snakes, and tying themselves to one another by their tails rapidly formed two chains. One of these living chains entwined itself round my neck, the other twisted itself about my legs, and I found myself, without being able to offer the least resistance, the connecting link, as it were, of these two chains, which soon formed only one, a kind of garland of apes, animated and convulsive. As soon as this operation was completed, the end of the chain which represented what one may style the head threw itself with the swiftness of an arrow to the other side of the crater; the end representing the tail did not move from where it was, and a giddy swinging movement at once commenced. Picture to yourself if you can my sad and ridiculous situation, swinging from right to left and from left to right over a fire a hundred feet broad, all smoking and blazing beneath me.

Each succeeding oscillation became quicker and quicker, owing, I presume, to the increasing recklessness of my tormentors, until I was swung from curve to curve, sixty feet on one side and sixty feet on the other; then—but how is it possible for me in the state of mind in which I then was to have calculated this frightful rate of progression? Twenty thousand spectators, or rather twenty thousand grimaces, twenty thousand contortions, fifty ranks deep, surrounded the opening of the crater, above which I was floating, looking like a forest of skins dotted with black and yellow muzzles, and bristling with teeth which gnashed and chattered without ceasing; and from one extremity to the other gigantic magots, quadrumanous constables armed with sticks, moved about to keep order during the entertainment—and what an entertainment, too, for even an ape to derive gratification from! At one moment I believed myself thrown into the clouds, at the next I felt the heat of the fire scorching my back. I say nothing of the pain which I suffered from being wrapped about and bound by those nervous cords which cut into my very skin. And, worse than all, I was not even at the end of my punishment.

The formidable swinging movement increased, the garland of apes, of which I formed part, soon overleaped its most elevated point of ascension, and then it was no longer a simple alternating movement, more or less perilous, that I had to undergo, but a rotatory motion, first rapid, then furious, and at last terrible. I had been, as it were, the balance of a pendulum; I was now a cart-wheel, the sails of a windmill, the stone in a sling; and I turned, and turned, and turned till I became first white, then red, then purple, then violet, and at last blue, and had quite lost my senses. I cried out; my cries of suffering, of despair, and fear were lost amidst the squealing huzzas and furious shriekings of these myriads of evil beings. When they had shaken and whirled me about to their hearts’ content, they brought their atrocious farce to a termination in the following manner:—Giving me a final and more furious shaking than any I had before experienced—ah! it makes my blood run cold to think of it—to the extreme curve of the chain, which, when it had attained the highest degree of gyratory violence, they all at once snapped asunder, breaking it at the centre, where I was fixed. The consequence was that I was flying like a ball across the crater, high above the enthusiastic spectators—above everything, in fact, to a distance of one or two hundred yards. Heaven only knows how I escaped being smashed to pieces on falling! Doubtless there were still further torments in store for me.

What were your thoughts, perhaps my readers will ask, while you were thus travelling through space in a manner so contrary to the usual habits of our kind? Why, I thought how very cruel we are when, to amuse ourselves, we send up cats or dogs in the car of a small balloon, and how very blamable I had been myself in one day attaching a poor kitten, who afterwards died from fright, to the tail of a large kite, for the purpose of amusing the idlers of Macao. I had been in my turn attached to the tail of a kite. What right had I to complain?

On coming to myself—and I am entirely ignorant how long the swoon which followed my horrible fall lasted—I perceived two mandrills of the most savage kind on guard, sword in hand, near me, imitating, so far as parody imitates truth, the gait and stiffness of English soldiers. Through want of experience, instead of confining themselves to placing a gaiter on each leg, every one of the mandrills had in addition placed a gaiter on each arm. I attributed this grotesque addition to simple ignorance, since there could be no such grade among apes as clothing colonels, ready at all times to decree any absurd addition to the soldier’s uniform, provided they could share the profit derived from it with the contractors. Slight as had been my opportunities of observing this automatic society, I nevertheless endeavoured to account to myself in a vague sort of way how it was that it came to offer a copy, fantastic and distorted though it might be, of the life of civilised man. Those uniform-buttons, already recognised by me in my hour of torture, furnished me with a clue. Unquestionably these half-intelligent animals and the men whose garments they were dragging about had lived together. My inference seemed so far undeniable. I had, however, still to discover how it was that the one had managed to obtain possession of the property of the other; but this was a question by no means easy to resolve all at once, particularly in the uncomfortable position in which I was placed. Just let the reader try to reflect when his head, the seat of reflection, is in perpetual fear of being broken by a blow from a bludgeon.

The two sentinels with the four gaiters, seeing me open my eyes, signalled to me to follow them. I mustered up all my strength and obeyed.

They conducted me in the direction of the devastated buildings which had excited my surprise some eight or ten days previously, when I was under the protection of the interesting Saïmira.

What had become of Saïmira?

What had become of Mococo?

What was about to become of me?

My two guardians introduced me, with some sharp blows dealt out to me with the flat side of their sabres, into one of the houses, the exterior of which was more pretentious in appearance than any of the others, and which I supposed, on this account, to have been the head-quarters of the station—the residence, in fact, of Vice-Admiral Campbell. The interior of the admiral’s house scarcely differed, so far as the desolate condition to which it was reduced was concerned, from the others. A kind of order, however, reigned in the midst of this lamentable chaos. For instance, the pictures, after having been removed from their hooks, had been placed back again, but upside down. I acknowledge that, so far as many of the pictures were concerned, this was a matter of no moment whatever, while for others it was a positive advantage. I should not be surprised if people generally became of my opinion after trying the effect of this reversing process on certain modern pictures in their collections.

Karabouffi the First, warned of my arrival by the chattering of my custodians, rushed up to me. The sight of the hated baboon made me feel timid, more timid, indeed, than usual, and what added in some degree to my fear was seeing him covered from head to foot with feathers. The sight of this ape, transformed as it were, to all appearances, into a bird, naturally enough filled me at first with great surprise. But having examined him more attentively, I perceived that the thousands of feathers under which his hairy skin seemed to have disappeared were writing-quills, which he stuck under his arms, upon his ears, in his mouth, and even up his nose, as well as fastened all over his wrinkled skin. In moving towards me some of the feathers fell out, and I noticed that most of them had been made into pens. The two ourang-outangs who accompanied him, and who appeared to be his prime ministers, were covered, like their master, from head to foot with feathers.

Karabouffi preceded me into the principal room, which it seems he had left in order to receive me; and there I saw a hundred sapajous in a state of intense nervous excitement, and apparently very busy, sprawling over desks, dipping their pens and very often their hands into inkstands without number, and scribbling upon sheets of paper laid before them—imitating, in fact, the copying-clerks in the public offices at Macao. They worked as if by steam; the pens scratched incessantly, and sheets after sheets of paper flew about in all directions.

When one of these sheets of paper was sufficiently scratched and scrawled over it was passed to some more venerable sapajou, who signed it, and in his turn passed it on to some sapajou still more grave-looking, who again signed the paper and fixed his seal to it. Being afterwards handed to one of the crowd of sapajous who waited outside, the paper was transmitted without loss of time from sapajou to sapajou placed at certain distances, precisely as I had seen them when they were occupied in throwing wood into the furnace, into which I had had a narrow escape of being thrown myself. After a lapse of something like ten minutes, the paper which had traversed the island by means of this telegraphic system of communication came into Karabouffi’s hands, who, after having applied it to the purposes of a pocket-handkerchief, handed it over to an old mangabey, whom he had invested with the dignity of Keeper of the Court Records.

It was very evident to me that these savage creatures, after the departure, flight, or perhaps extermination of the English colony, had taken possession of all the official paper and pens which they could find, and of the vice-admiral’s seal; and that, in servile imitation of what they had so frequently witnessed, they were despatching at random orders from all sides, thereby, without intending it, offering a witty comment on the ordinary practice of European bureaucracy, that pest of civilisation which devours time, money, and men, and invariably terminates by a paper with which, were we accustomed to paper pocket-handkerchiefs like the Japanese, the last receiver of it might just as well wipe his nose for any better use he could put it to.

Karabouffi, in the most imperious way, threw in my face several quires of paper and several parcels of quills. The expressive look which he afterwards gave me implied, as I imagined, that I was to occupy myself without uttering a word with these packets of pens and quires of paper, precisely like his other clerks, who were working away at such a desperate rate before my eyes.

During three times twenty-four hours I was not permitted either to leave my place or to let my pen rest. I was compelled under pain of all that is terrible to blacken ream after ream of paper, and when the virgin whiteness of these sheets had entirely disappeared under the clouds of ink with which I overlaid them, one of the strange scribes at my elbow took the papers from me and gave them, as I have already described, to a corps of apes, charged with the duty of conveying them round the island. For seventy-two hours I did not get even a wink of sleep, since my enemies, endowed for the most part with the faculty of seeing in the dark, whenever I was about to succumb to slumber, cruelly pinched my arms, pulled my hair, kicked me in the back, or scratched my face with their sharp claws, so as to keep me wide awake. What horrible torture!

Oh, how sincerely at this moment did I pity those numbers of young men condemned by the misfortune of their birth or the stupidity of their relations to spend their lives in doing nothing but ply their pens from morning to evening within the four walls of some dreary office!

CHAPTER VII.

Bell-ringing by the monkeys.—Disorder in Monkey Villas.—Hungry, I discover stores.—His Majesty in a jar of quinces.—Scrambling for nuts.—Monkeys tipsy.—Fear of their intoxicated revels.—Night falls as I am in the midst of a terrible uproar.—I discover candles and lucifer matches.—The monkeys find them also.—Candle-dance by the apes.

The fourth day of this singular penitential ordeal I was startled at hearing a bell ring, and immediately fancied myself saved, for I could attribute only to one of my own species the faculty of employing this method of signalling. Flinging down my pen I abandoned my cruel labour, and ran at the top of my speed towards the place whence I supposed the sound proceeded. I decided to die rather than remain any longer in the place where I had been kept by constraint and blows for three days and nights. My guards did not dare to hold me back. I arrived without halting at the foot of the post above which the bell was hung, when my disappointment was complete at finding that it was not a man but an ape who was pulling the rope.

The post of the bell was fixed at the corner of a large courtyard, the four sides of which were composed of ranges of elegant apartments. This courtyard received both air and light through an immense awning of rose-coloured cloth, filled out by the wind, and enjoyed a perpetual freshness arising from a natural basin of water which was situated in the very centre of the square. Luxuriant turf, with beds of shrubs and flowers, formed a border to this refreshing pool. Tied together in bouquets by a kind of weed, a tropical hair-like plant, bamboos grew with their delicate trunks and glossy foliage to a height of sixty feet. In India this cool part of a house, where one really manages to breathe, is called the verandah. Did India take the idea of verandahs from the Moors, or did the Moors borrow verandahs from the Hindoos to introduce them into Spain and Portugal? I cannot say. All I know is that the inhabitants dine in these places during the heat of the day, walk in them of an evening, and often make them their sleeping apartment for the night. Divans from Cabul, carpets from Bagdad, mats from Ceylon, and Manilla hammocks are the ordinary furniture of these verandahs.

Karabouffi, who had taken possession without ceremony of the finest house of all, had the wit to choose the verandah for himself and court to reside in. Profiting by the long tables laid out for the officers of the station, he and his suite occasionally took their meals there, though to be sure without ever thinking of changing the tablecloth.

On entering this verandah I found myself in the midst of the most distressing disorder that one can possibly imagine. There were plates scattered about in all directions, silver dishes lying here and there, broken china, smashed decanters, forks stuck by the prongs into the table, bottles lying on their sides, and glasses piled up one within the other.

The bell which I had heard was to announce dinner.

Karabouffi strutted into the room and took a place in the very middle of the table, between a soup-plate and cruet-stand; his favourites seated themselves around—some on the table, others underneath.

I acknowledge that, owing to the hunger which I endured, I felt indisposed to criticise the behaviour of the guests and the postures in which they placed themselves too closely. Besides, I could not but remember that among the nations of the world the etiquette of the dinner-table has not yet been reduced to anything like a system of uniformity. For instance, the English commonly dine without napkins; the French invariably with; the Chinese eat with little ivory sticks; Orientals with their hands instead of forks; the Thibetans eat standing up; the Romans ate reclining; the American Indians eat with fish-bones shaped like needles. Why, then, should I find fault with these creatures, who simply ate as instinct taught them?

Only it was necessary to have something to eat. The vegetables which my table companions eagerly devoured, and which they occasionally sought to thrust into my mouth, were neither palatable nor satisfying. I was suffering the most cruel hunger. Whilst casting my sad and haggard eyes round the verandah, almost every window of which indicated a distinct room, and thinking of the many capital repasts which the English officers had here partaken of, an inscription over a window a little way off met my sight. It consisted of these words, in black letters on a white ground:—“Kitchens of the officers of the staff.” I rushed in the direction far quicker than I had done to the sound of the bell. Kitchens! a plurality of kitchens! There were of course several kitchens, then! It is needless to say that I was followed in my impetuous rush by Karabouffi’s staff, who were at this moment a curious rather than a hostile crowd. This general curiosity was in fact my great protection against the habitual perversity of my quadrumanous tyrants.

In my impetuosity I penetrated into a large and handsome apartment of the verandah, evidently the reception-room, and which had been by no means so badly treated as other parts of the building. The arm-chairs appeared to be only half stripped of their coverings; the chandelier and ormolu brackets of several branches still decorated the ceiling and walls. Various articles of furniture, the use of which the ravagers had no doubt been unable to divine, were left intact. These were a piano, an accordion, and a guitar. I judged from these various signs that the recollection of the beatings which they must have frequently received at the hands of the cooks, their natural enemies, whom they are always robbing, had induced the apes to keep clear of the kitchens.

From the reception-room I passed into the dining-hall, situated at the back of the verandah, and from the dining-hall into the kitchen. Alas! weeks, months, perhaps, had elapsed since the English settlers had disappeared, and I ought not to have expected to have seen haunches of venison, turkeys, pheasants, and hares roasting on the spit. The kitchen fire was extinguished, and all was cold and desolate. My apes had evidently passed through here. But, apes as they were, and will always be, they had not found out how to open the cupboards. The claws of the depredators had left their traces behind them, written in long furrows across the doors—that was all. I opened one cupboard after another. Providence had evidently guided me, for I found them filled with cases of pâté-de-foie gras, and all kinds of preserved meats, poultry, fish, and vegetables, with boxes of sardines and pots of jams, and jars of fruits and sweetmeats. Guess if I didn’t seize with avidity on these treasures.

Prudence suggested to me not to be ungrateful. I therefore offered a colossal jar of preserved quinces to his Majesty King Karabouffi, who forthwith thrust his head into it right up to the shoulders; but his subjects, envious and jealous at this proceeding, immediately commenced to draw him out by the legs and tail. Karabouffi, however, held tight, and he and the jar resisted their efforts with success. Nevertheless, I am quite of the opinion that a prudent sovereign ought not to indulge too freely in sweetmeats in the presence of his subjects. The strife continued; the jar at length began to give way. A revolution was inevitably about to spring from this trivial, this insignificant incident.

Now, for my part, I considered that a revolution at this particular moment would in all probability not turn out to my advantage. One Karabouffi dead, twenty other Karabouffis would spring up to succeed him. This was easily to be perceived, and what was equally certain was that the last Karabouffi would be sure to be worse than his predecessors; so for the purpose of preventing such a catastrophe, this is what I did: I emptied a bag of nuts on the ground. Suddenly courtiers and subjects, leaving their lord and master to partake of the preserved quinces to his heart’s content, rushed after the nuts, for which they scrambled like a parcel of schoolboys. It is not a bad plan—indeed, it is rather a method of sound policy—to throw from time to time a few handfuls of nuts among people who are quarrelling.

In presence of the nuts the general discontent vanished. I profited by this circumstance to taste a few of those delicious preserves which had fallen into my hands. I was obliged while eating them to hold the cupboard door only partially open, for fear that the spies by whom I was surrounded should desire to share these dainties with me. Had I given them the chance, they would have whipped everything off in the twinkling of an eye. But I was only taking half measures of protection, as I am now about to show. After having eaten my fill, I took a bottle of wine from a hamper, broke the neck off it, and commenced to drink. I drank with satisfaction, with pleasure—indeed, I may say with ecstasy. But in my ecstasy I forgot myself, and left the cupboard door wide open. Whilst I was counting the stars, after the manner of Sancho Panza, my companions insinuated themselves into the cupboard, fell on to the hampers of wine, seized the bottles as they had seen me do: the reader can divine the rest.

Once intoxicated, they called one another names in ape’s language, which was enough to make any one tremble; they sent plates flying at one another’s heads, and somehow or other never missed their aim; they struck one another on the back with the empty bottles until they shivered them into fragments. “Ah,” said I to myself, “Nature has done well to indicate to man the constant moderation which he ought to bring, and which he really does bring, to the gratification of his desires. As a matter of course he never falls into those scandalous excesses in which I saw these miserable imitations of our species so readily indulge.”

I felt proud at this new proof of our superiority over the monkey tribe.

It has been said, I know, that men have occasionally forgotten themselves at dessert, and behaved with less politeness than they ordinarily do. People will cite, for instance, the cases of Alexander, who killed Clytus after a drinking bout; and of Charles XII., who boxed his mother’s ears on leaving table; and of King Christian of Denmark. But see how rare the examples are! One is obliged to search history to its lowest depths for them. I am aware it has been pretended that our most painful diseases result from the too great fondness which we are said to have for the pleasures of the table, and from our partiality for alcoholic drinks. This proves, however, absolutely nothing, for these are at best but mere suppositions. Tell me, if you please, where I shall look for a counterpart of the frightful reality I have just described, and which I saw passing before my eyes.

I might have hit upon even still more flattering comparisons for my own species, but night was coming on, and I watched it approach with an inexpressible fear; for I had no longer the resource of hiding myself in the woods and escaping my enemies. They were all present, they were all more or less intoxicated, and I was hemmed in by them on all sides.

It may be supposed that my position was anything but an agreeable one in the midst of this maddened pandemonium, giving itself up in the darkness of the night to the most frightful eccentricities. As this darkness increased so did my fear. Every means of flight were cut off from me. I expected to be strangled, choked, or torn in pieces on the spot. Not a single avenue of escape was open to me—no, not one!

In the excess of my alarm the idea suddenly occurred to me of hiding myself away in one of the cupboards, and by this means escaping the fate which threatened me. It was while seeking to put in execution this impossible project, considering the narrow space into which I should have been obliged to squeeze myself, that I displaced the lid of a chest, and found my hand in contact with some solid substance. I pass my hand carefully over it, I examine it so far as a doubtful light permits me, when judge of my delight at discovering that it was a packet of wax candles. The chest was evidently filled with them. I immediately drew my box of lucifers from my pocket and lighted one. Delivered from the horror of darkness in the unhappy condition in which I was, I trembled all over with emotion. What a delicious surprise! What joy! Unfortunately I did not remark, when closing the cupboard that my spies might not play me the same trick as they had done with the wine, that I had locked one of them in. He uttered a cry of alarm, on hearing which I instantly opened the door, or it might have turned out badly for me. All was over. My captive, once free, placed himself in the opening of the door so that I could not shut it without crushing him. The others, profiting by this accident, immediately made a rush for the cupboard, and pillaged the chest in the twinkling of an eye. Behold them all lighting their candles at mine and waving them over their heads, dancing about with delight at the continued repetition of these fantastic flames, with which their little Satanic eyes were at once dazzled and fascinated. Alas! I only fell from one state of fright into another. Now I stood a chance of being burnt like a faggot, for they carried their lighted tapers so recklessly that they had already commenced to singe the skins of each other. A happy inspiration, drawn from the new danger which I had myself called down, at this moment took possession of me.

CHAPTER VIII.

An energetic pianiste.—Vigorous dancers.—A bevy of quadrumanous beauties.—The parasol polka.—Amatory tomfooleries.—I am compelled to take part in a new musical air.—Am commanded to climb up a tall pole.—Am forced to jump through hoops, throw somersaults, and cut capers.—Am indebted to Saïmira for a respite.

I traversed the dining-hall, passed into the reception-room, where I placed one of my candles on a window-seat; I then lighted a second, which I fixed elsewhere. Having observed me do this—what, indeed, did they not observe?—they hastened to place their candles wherever they could discover a support for them. I congratulated myself on my success; the candles had ceased to play any further an incendiary part in the apish orgie. No sooner, however, had they done this than they appeared to recall to mind that they had seen the room lighted up in this fashion before—doubtlessly on some occasion when the vice-admiral gave a soirée or a ball. They exchanged glances with each other, and in the twinkling of an eye climbed up on one another’s backs and placed the candles in the chandeliers and in the ormolu brackets fixed against the walls.