The simian had one arm around the man’s neck, but it was not trying to choke him. Instead, the odd little creature was trying to reach a bright-red balloon, one of the small kind sold when the circus comes to town. The man had bought it for his little girl.
“Give him the balloon!” cried the crowd, delighted at the antics of the monkeys.
“No, no, daddy! It’s mine! Get the monkey for me, too,” cried the little girl.
“Stand still a minute!” called Jack. “I’ll catch the monkey.”
He hurried up to the man, and grabbed the hairy little brute. The monkey tried to get away, but Jack held it tight, and soon had carried it back to the cage, having caught the first one of the runaways.
“That’s the way to do it,” said the man in charge of the monkey wagon. “The old man will have a fit if we lose any.”
Jack ran back to try and capture some more. It was an odd sight to see the queerly-dressed clowns, with the paint on their faces running into all sorts of streaks, darting through the crowd after the monkeys. The excitement among the women continued, and several bonnets had been ruined.
Some of the men in the throng now turned in to help, and five or six of the long-tailed beasts were caught. Jack captured another, and some of the other clowns managed to grab the nimble creatures as they scampered about.
In about ten minutes half of the number in the cage had been caught. The others—the large ones—had climbed to high points of the buildings along the street, where they chattered away, as if defying the men to get them.
“I’ll bring ’em back,” said the man who had charge of them. He went into a store, and purchased some apples, peanuts and candy. These things he gave to the recaptured monkeys in the cage, and the cries they set up as they fought over the possession of the dainties, attracted the others, who, anxious not to miss the feast, came trooping along, only too glad to submit to being captured, if only they could get something to eat.