“Blest if he don’t think I’m a big monkey up here,” thought Peter. “Monkeys throw sticks and stones. What a lark! Wish Mister Archie was here with me. I’ll let him have another;” and feeling for the next stone, he threw it from him sharply. “Frighten the beggar away,” he muttered.
But it had the contrary effect of arousing a fresh burst of hisses, stamps, and subdued yells.
“Oh, get out with you, you idgit!” said the young private, in a whisper, to himself. “Wish I could recollect how that big ape Captain Down used to keep chained up went on when he teased it. Chance it,” he muttered; and raising both hands to his mouth so as to speak between them, he sent forth his imitation of an angry monkey, spattering through the night air, his utterance being produced with wonderful rapidity:
Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chuk, chick! Chick, chuk, chack!
Errrrrr! growled the Malay.
Chick, chack, chuk, chack, chick, chack, chuk, check, check, chuk! snarled the imitation monkey.
What evidently meant in the Malay tongue, “Be off, you ugly beast!” came from below, followed by a pant as of somebody exerting himself; and simultaneously Peter Pegg felt a tug at one leg of his trousers, and a slight scratch which made him dart his left hand down and feel the bamboo staff of a spear which had passed right through his garment and had pinned his leg down to the thatch, in which the spear was deeply buried.
“You cowardly beast!” panted Peter softly. “This is getting a fellow’s monkey up in reality;” and without pausing to reflect upon what might be the consequences, he began to reach for and tear out every stone he could find, to hurl them with all his might in the direction from which the hissing and growling came.
The first must have gone pretty close to the angry sentry, the second startled him, and the third produced a yell as it struck him full in the back, for he had already begun his retreat; and after sending two or three more with all the vigour produced by anger, Peter Pegg lay back on the roof, listening to the distant pattering of feet, and laughing with suppressed mirth till the tears ran down his cheeks.
“Took me for one of them big monkeys,” he panted at last; and, in closer imitation than ever, he sent forth a final Chick, check, chuk, chick, chick, chack, chack, chack, after his retreating enemy.