Stan Lynn: A Boy's Adventures in China

by George Manville Fenn

Stan’s heart beat fast at the idea, for it was full of suggestions of escape.

But a soft, peculiar sound changed the current of his thoughts, and looking to his left, he was conscious of the dark blur passing quickly up to the top of the bamboo bars, and passing horizontally along; then, as the blur died out in the darkness, he heard the monkey come closer, working itself high up from bar to bar of the partition against which he stood, and glide swiftly down, brushing his breast with one hand as it dropped to his feet.

Tchack! it said softly, and the next moment the thin, sinewy hand was foraging about him to get at his, into which it nestled, and the poor animal uttered a low, heavy sigh of content.

For some minutes Stan could only think in a puzzled, confused way, feeling that he must be dreaming; but at length things settled themselves in an orderly way in his brain, till it became perfectly clear to him that the monkey must have some way out of the top of its cage which enabled it to pass along to his place.

If so, he reasoned, the yard must be open to it; and if it could get into the yard, it was quite possible that it could get through the doorway or over the wall; and if so, it was probable that it could get into some court or lane by the gate-house.

If the monkey could do this, he argued directly after, why could not he?

And now he could think clearly, his reason suggested that the crackling and splintering noise he had so frequently heard must have been caused by the animal trying to gnaw its way out, the noise which woke him having been made during the final efforts.

Stan’s heart began to beat faster and his ideas to flow more freely. He wondered now why it had not all seemed clear to him at once, for it was evident that if he could get through the partition and into the monkey’s cage, there was the way open for him also to escape. He had never troubled himself about the bars between him and his fellow-prisoner. Why should he have done so? He did not want to escape from one cage to the next. But now he recalled that the bamboos were smaller than those in front; a few touches of his hand confirmed this, and withdrawing the other from the monkey’s grasp, he seized two of the bars, and the animal sprang up them at once.

“Oh, if I could only climb like you!” said Stan to himself as he went from bar to bar, trying them and giving them a shake, when, after a few trials, to his surprise he heard one of those he held creak in a peculiar way; and upon seizing it with both hands, to his astonishment and delight he found it give way with a sharp crack, the middle having been gnawed through, while, climbing up a little, he was able to use it lever fashion and wrench it so much on one side that in another minute he managed to force himself through and stand in the place from which the monkey had escaped.

It is only the first step that costs, the French say in their proverb, and Stan found it so here. After a time he was able to make out what the monkey did to escape, for, close up in the left corner, he made out that instead of the bars looking regular black streaks against the grey light, there was one large, ragged patch of grey; and upon climbing up, by clinging leg helped, to a couple of the bars, he soon reached the top, where one had been gnawed right through and was now a splintery, sharp mass of fibres. Here, after some difficulty and a good deal of tearing, Stan managed to get through and slide down outside the bamboos, to drop the next minute into the yard.