“Gammoning us?”
“Yes, sir. That’s his artfulness. He likes to be carried down to his snug warm bed, and carried up again, and set here in the sun, and being fed with figs and sweet biscuits and lumps of sugar. It’s my ’pinion that he’s as well as you and me.”
“No, no,” said Mark. “I believe the poor thing is very ill.”
“I don’t, sir, and if you’ll let me, I’ll cure him in a minute.”
“But you’d hurt him.”
“Well, sir, I might hurt his feelings, but I wouldn’t hurt him nowheres else.”
“What will you do, then?”
“Here, hold hard,” said Billy in a whisper. “Don’t talk so loud; he’s a-watching of us.”
Mark glanced in the direction of the monkey, and sure enough the animal had drawn himself up a little, and was peering at them over the dog’s back, as the latter lay down at full length in the sunshine.
“That’s his artfulness, Mr Mark, sir,” whispered Billy. “I’ve had the keer of that there monkey ever since he come aboard, and have stood by him many’s the time when the men was up to their larks, and wanted to make him pick up red-hot ha’pennies, and to give him pepper pills to eat. Why, there was one chap used to spend hours setting traps for him. What d’yer think he used to do?”