Well, I just wish you could have heard that racket! No, on second thought perhaps it's just as well you didn't, for it might have made you deaf to hear so many guns going off at once. Oh, it was a fierce fight! if you will excuse me saying so. And after a while the Indians won, and into the cabin they rushed.
"Escape! Get away fellows," cried brave monkey boy Jacko. "I'll keep them back until you get away."
"That's not fair!" shouted Sammie Littletail. "Yes it is," said Billie Wagtail. Well, Billie and the other white soldiers ran out the back door, while Jacko was shooting at the Indians at the front door, and so all the white soldiers got away except little red monkey, and he was caught.
"Now, we'll tie him to a tree, and we'll go off and try to catch the others," said Jumpo. So, in fun, they tied Jacko fast to a tree, and left him there in the woods by the make-believe cabin all alone, while they ran off shouting.
"My! That was jolly sport," thought Jacko, and he was glad to rest for a while. Then he began to feel a bit lonesome. "I wish I could get away," he said, and he found that he could wiggle his arms out of the ropes. "But it wouldn't be fair to run off when they have captured me," he went on. "Though I know what I can do. I'll play a trick on them when they come back."
In his coat pocket he found an empty paper bag. This he blew up full of wind, and he twisted the neck of it so the wind wouldn't get out.
"When they come back I'll crack the bag and make it burst. They will think it's a cannon," he said with a laugh. Then he waited.
But all of a sudden, before he could count forty-'leven, along came the skillery-scalery alligator. The creature with the double-jointed tail saw the little red monkey tied fast to the tree with ropes.
"Ah, ha! Now I have you!" cried the 'gator, licking his chops. "You can't get away from me this time."
And it didn't seem as if Jacko could. He tugged and strained at the ropes, but they were too tight. It looked as if he were going to be eaten up.