Stan Lynn: A Boy's Adventures in China

by George Manville Fenn

The great cowardly brute fell against one of his comrades, who responded by giving him a heavy thrust which sent him against the third, who raised his knee so suddenly that Stan’s assailant cannoned off and fell heavily against the cage-like partition.

“Hergh!” he growled savagely as he began to gather himself up slowly, glowering at Stan the while and muttering threats. But the next minute he uttered a yell and sprang to his feet, but only to fall back, with his head giving a heavy, resounding rap against the bamboo uprights, where Stan saw that it was held tightly, while his big, round face, turned towards the spectators of his trouble, was wrinkled up into distortions caused by fear and pain.

For the moment Stan was puzzled, and the more so at seeing the other two begin roaring with laughter as their companion continued to yell for help, while they stamped about the prison, thumping the butts of their spears upon the open floor.

“Why doesn’t he get up?” thought Stan.

A strange, snarling, growling noise gave the explanation. It was just such a sound as would be given out by a hound worrying a fox, and now it was that Stan grasped what had happened. For the enraged monkey had seen its opportunity when its tormentor had fallen and the back of his head struck the partition; it had darted its long, sinewy hand and arm through, and snatched them back, drawing soldier’s pigtail into the den. Then, with a snarl of triumph, a grab was made with the other hand and feet, the steel-trap-like jaws closed upon the thickest part of the plait, and holding on with bulldog-like tenacity, and more than double that animal’s strength, the fierce little creature growled and worried and tore away till Stan’s rage evaporated in something very much like enjoyment of the victim’s discomfiture.

“Well done, monkey!” he said to himself, and then waited to see the termination of the encounter.

One thing was very evident, and that was the impossibility of the man freeing himself, for at every struggle to draw the tail from the little animal’s grasp, and any increase of the distance between the imprisoned head and the bars, there was a fierce, worrying noise, and the monkey made a bound back which drew the head against the bars with a heavy thump, to the increase of the man’s agony, as it forced from him fresh yells for help and more laughter from his companions.

This went on and on, the sufferer running up and down a whole gamut of appeals, cries that were doubtless Chinese oaths hurled at his friends, threats of what he would do to the monkey, and orders to Stan—at least they seemed to be, for he stared furiously at the lad as he shouted, and at last so piteously in the midst of a savage worrying, which sounded as if the monkey was beginning to tear at the sufferer’s head, that Stan’s compassion was moved, and he went forward to try and get the man free.

But the others dashed at him at once, and holding their spears horizontally, thrust him back, growling out what evidently meant “No, no, no!” and completely debarring the lad from giving any aid.

At last, not from good fellowship, but from growing tired of the sport, the two soldiers began to lend an ear to their comrade’s appeals; and after a little banter from one, and a few shouts from the other to the monkey, which seemed to Stan to be incitements to the animal to go on worrying, a word or two passed between them, resulting in one picking up the water-pot, putting his spear in a corner, and stepping out into what seemed to be a passage.