CHAPTER XVIII.
FROM THE FRYING-PAN TO THE FIRE.
Never before did an unwilling performer have such an attentive and at the same time odd-looking audience. Under other circumstances Philip would have been convulsed with laughter at the scene presented in this drawing-room; but just now it was anything rather than comical, and sorrow instead of mirth was imprinted upon his face. He, the redoubtable trainer of animals, was about to attempt a handspring for a party of apes, baboons, mandrills and monkeys!
Hardly knowing how to begin, he stood for a moment hesitating; but the same means which had been employed to assist him in climbing the pole was brought into requisition, until his limbs and back felt as if they had been treated to a bath of fire.
Then the talented monkey turned one more somersault in front of Philip and stood in an expectant attitude. There was no question but that he intended the performance should be repeated, and the unfortunate youth did his best to obey. He turned a somersault, and at the same time twisted his spinal column until there was every reason to believe it was dislocated.
Then the instructor stood on his head, and Philip was obliged to attempt the same maneuver, but only to fail utterly. As a reward for his awkwardness the bamboo sticks once more descended in a shower.
To relate all the misery and sorrows of the hour which followed would be to tell one long tale of woe. Suffice it to say that as far as possible the animal-trainer copied the movements of the demon-like monkey in front of him. He jumped through hoops, blew kisses to the audience, went around hat in hand begging for money, and realized, as never before, how much labor his pupils had been forced to perform.
As he had shown anger when they failed, and treated them with liberal doses of the whip, so did they give the same token of displeasure because of his awkward movements.
This painful and humiliating performance might have continued until it became literally an impossibility for Philip to raise either a hand or foot, had it not been for an unexplained diversion.
He was thoroughly exhausted. It seemed that not even once more could he go through the semblance of repeating his instructor’s example, and he believed that the time had come when his career on this earth would be ended forever, under the castigation of the apes. At this supreme moment a sudden uproar in the adjoining apartment caused the spectators in this new school of ground and lofty tumbling to rush helter-skelter from the place of amusement, and to his most intense relief the unhappy captive was left alone.