But Jack had a friend, and he never embarked on his voyages into the far-away dreamland without calling on his old chum Murph to join him.
Yes, Murph gambolled with him in the tropical jungles, Murph frolicked with him in the tall grasses, Murph and he amused themselves together at never-ending games of play; if ever it was granted him to see his native land again, he fully hoped to take Murph along with him.
Poor Jack! he did not understand that the worthy Murph, acrobat as he was, would have found it hard to follow him in the lofty regions where his congeners are wont to disport themselves, nearer to the stars than the earth. Not a doubt of it, Murph would have had to kick his heels at the foot of a tree, while his friend was off and away aloft; and the smallest of his perils would have been to find himself, on looking round, face to face with a python-snake, just uncoiling his folds to spring, or else, on the river-banks, confronted with the gaping jaws of a crocodile.
Murph could play dominoes, tell fortunes, hunt for a handkerchief in a spectator’s pocket, read the paper. Murph had many other accomplishments besides, but it is far from certain that he would have extricated himself successfully from a tête-à-tête of this sort with beasts that could boast neither his education nor his manners.
The liking was reciprocal. From the very first Jack had taken a fancy to the big woolly-coated dog, as woolly as a sheep, who never barked or growled or grumbled or showed his teeth—so unlike the other dogs in the menagerie; in the same way Murph, the big dog, had formed an affection for the well-behaved, sad-faced little ape, who never pulled his tail and never tried to scratch out his eyes.
As it happened, the showman had made up his mind to make them perform together. Murph was the best runner in the troupe; there was nobody like him for a round trot or a swinging gallop, for wheeling suddenly round and dropping to his knees just before making his exit, nobody to match Murph, always good-tempered and imperturbable, always on the look-out, with his bright eyes half hid under the bushy eyebrows, for a bit of sugar and a round of applause.
Jack, for his part, had very soon become a brilliant horseman, lissom and fearless, an adept at leaping through the hoops and vaulting the bars. Thus the two seemed made for each other, both in body and mind. They bore the hardships of the life together, and they shared its successes; by dint of standing so often back against back and muzzle against muzzle, they found their hearts brought close together too, and became fast friends. Murph was never to be seen without Jack; wherever Jack was, Murph was there as well; they lived curled up on the same rug, in the same corner, under the same table, Murph licking Jack in the neck, and Jack stroking Murph’s nose, each bound to each in perfect trust and amity.
V
Murph was older than Jack by nearly nine years, and his years made him nearly as serious-minded as his friend. But it was a different sort of gravity. Murph was neither morose nor disillusioned; his was the gentle seriousness of old age. He had seen many things since he had been in the world, but life did not appear to have left only its dregs in him. He still believed in springtide, in friendship, in the master’s kind heart; then he had neither family nor native land to regret, for he had been born in the menagerie of a father and mother broken in like himself to circle the trapeze and leap through the hoop.
His horizon was bounded by the four walls of the caravan in which, as a puppy still sucking at his mother’s breast, he had been carted from fair to fair. Day by day he had watched from behind the window-panes the long procession of cities and countries filing past; he had visited most parts of Europe, in company with the strange omnium-gatherum of apes, goats, parrots, and dogs that at each halting-place was the delight of the infant population. But he had never taken it upon him to covet the kingdom of this world; he had never craved to roam at liberty through the streets; never, in one word, had he so much as dreamt of playing truant. He was a very learned dog, and, like other learned people, he lived absorbed in his own thoughts, self-centred within the circle of his meditations, seeking nothing of things outside.