"Ah! there come the rascals."
Next moment two splendid specimens of the agile gibbon (Hylobates agilis) came bounding from a tree with screams of delight.
"Oo—ah—ee!" they cried.
They stood nearly four feet high, and their faces were a study of blended fun and mischief. Such droll-looking apes Dr. Reikie had never seen before.
He told the stranger all about his adventure, and as they walked towards the naturalist's bungalow they had a hearty laugh over it.
Mr. Starley, as he was called, had a wonderful collection of curios and pets, and at his house Dr. Reikie and Jack also became constant visitors all the time the ship lay here.
CHAPTER XII.
TOM FINCH AND THE SHARK—SHOOTING IN THE
DISMAL SWAMP—DEATH AND PROMOTION.
It took the Gurnet a year and a half more to complete even two-thirds of her circuit, and this was in reality a voyage round the world of a far more complete nature than any offered by ocean racers nowadays, that do little more than touch at a port, hurry the passengers through the sights, and go off again. There is a vast deal of difference, as every man-o'-war sailor could tell you, between "doing" the world and "seeing" the world. Perhaps the best way to see the world would be to have a yacht of one's own, and to forget there is any such word as "time" in the dictionary. But, alas! few of us are born with silver spoons in our mouths, so we must be content to stay at home and read.
But the Gurnet sailed for the Chinese seas from Ceylon, then visited Java, and next straight away for Australia and New Zealand. After this she steered east and by south straight for stormy Cape Horn, rounding which, amid terrible dangers owing to a gale that drove her—after an accident to her machinery—among the icebergs, she bore up along the coast of South America till past Pernambuco, when the course was changed to north-north-west; and so we find her at long last safe at anchor at Port Royal, Jamaica.