Bonypart groaned audibly and recovering himself, made another effort to smile, but failed, and sighed hungrily, whereat the younger pupil broke into a dismal wail, and had to be taken out and soothed with lemonade.
The fine collection of natural curiosities, illustrating the descent of man, was reserved for the last, and Professor Thunder proudly arrayed his company before the cages containing the tiny apes, the middling-sized gibbons, the baboon, Ammonia, the gorilla, and Mahdi, the man-monkey, or Missing Link.
The young ladies were quite enthusiastic in their admiration. They fed the Missing Link with spongecake and nuts, which he took from their hands and ate with a certain genteel decorum. His manner of cracking the nuts was much appreciated. Nickie was a specialist at nut-cracking, having made a special study of the subject at the Zoo.
Some of the girls said he was a "regular dear," and threw him flowers, and frosty Miss Arnott relaxed her elbows a trifle, and admitted that this quaint creature was indeed entertaining and instructive—most instructive. She had never met a more instructive creature. And meanwhile Ammonia the gorilla shook the dividing bars, and reached fierce claws towards Mahdi, convulsed with jealousy, and inspired with a primitive yearning for nuts.
Professor Thunder spread himself in the delivery of his learned oration on the origin of the human race, beginning with Spider, and ranging up to the wondrous Missing Link. "Captured by my own hand in the jungles of Central Africa, ladies," said he, with fine dramatic elocution and the attitudes of a leading man.
"You will observe that the creature is kept in semi-darkness, that is because he is accustomed to the thick shades of his native forests. He is very docile, excepting when attacked or irritated"—(descriptive growls from the Missing Link)—"when he displays extraordinary activity in pursuit of his foes"—(display of extraordinary activity by Madhi, swinging on the bar, racing round the cage, roaring, &c.). "He is very human in his appearance, as you will observe, and is much more upright in his carriage than the gorilla, while his mild and benevolent expression in repose"—(mild and benevolent expression artfully simulated by the Missing Link)—"gives his countenance a certain manly beauty and dignity. Looking at him thus, ladies, no one will deny that he stands for the missing link in the chain leading from the small ape up through the gorilla to the noblest work of God." The Professor finished chin up, heels together, eyes lifted, and the left hand thrust in the vest, a la Napoleon—to signify the highest effort of a benign Providence.
Here Ammonia created a diversion by squealing angrily, spitting at the
Missing Link, and clawing for him in a paroxysm of professional envy.
"I think, ladies," continued Professor Thunder in his best manner, "that even those who discard the Darwinian hypothesis because of their objection to acknowledging relationship with the monkeys should have no reluctance to admit some distant connection with this noble and intelligent being, so like man in bearing and intellect, and yet so closely allied to the gorilla that we cannot deny—Blazes and fury!"
The Professor's indecorous ejaculation was in spired by the mean, vicious, and unsportsmanlike conduct of Ammonia the gorilla, who had succeeded in gripping Mahdi by one leg, and was hanging on, squealing frightfully.
"Pull him off! Pull him off!" yelled the Missing Link, forgetting everything in the moment of pain and, peril.