Two seconds later a groan of horror burst from his lips, for every one of the half-drunken monkeys immediately conceived it necessary to do the same thing, and he was undermost in the living stack, each member of which continued to beat the other with such fragments of glass as had survived the first onslaught.
It seemed certain he would be crushed to death—crushed between two or three hundred quarts of wine encased in apes’ skins, and each of these animated bottles writhing, twisting and scratching to get undermost.
It was fully fifteen minutes before Philip could so far extricate himself as to be able once more to divert the attention of the party, and then he seized the first possible means of deliverance. Wresting a half-shattered bottle from the clutch of the nearest ape, he threw it toward the window, and, as a natural consequence, every monkey about him struggled to his feet that he might repeat the movement.
While this afforded him some slight relief, it was decidedly a dangerous experiment. The wine had begun its work, and the apes were now so thoroughly intoxicated as to have no idea of direction.
Instead of hurling the sharp fragments through the window, as Philip intended they should, the long-tailed drunkards threw them at the doors, the stove, or their companions, until one would have thought himself in a fierce storm, where hail-stones were replaced by glass.
To remain upright without great danger of being seriously wounded, if not killed, was impossible, and he who had begun this last and most dangerous amusement was forced to throw himself on the floor to avoid the flying particles.
Again did he witness another painful proof of an ape’s power of imitation. In a twinkling every animal in the room threw himself on the floor, and once more did Philip find himself the “under dog in the fight.”
He was wounded in numberless places from the claws of his companions or the fragments of glass, and yet, whether he arose or remained passive, there was still the sad satisfaction of knowing that it was he, and he alone, who set the fashion in this kingdom of apes.