“Who said anything about birds?” replied Shaddy sourly; “I said monkeys.”
“No.”
“Well, I meant to, my lad. There: on you go.”
“Monkey—a little man,” said Rob, shaking his head. “No, I couldn’t shoot one of them.”
“Here, give us hold of the bow and arrow, then, my lad,” cried the old sailor. “’Tisn’t a time for being nice. Better shoot a monkey and eat it than for me and Mr Brazier to have to kill and eat you.”
Rob handed the newly made weapons, and Shaddy took them grumblingly.
“Not the sort of tackle I’m used to,” he said. “Bound to say I could do far better with a gun.”
He fitted the notch of the arrow to the string and drew the bow a little as if to try it; then moving off a few yards under cover of the trees, Rob was about to follow him, but he turned back directly.
“Don’t you come,” he said; “better let me try alone. Two of us might scare ’em.”
But Shaddy did not have any occasion to go further, for all at once, as if in obedience to a signal, the party of monkeys in the forest a short distance before them came leaping from tree to tree till they were in the one beneath which the two travellers were waiting, stopped short, and began to stare down wonderingly at them, one largish fellow holding back the bough above his head in a singularly human way, while his face looked puzzled as well as annoyed.