Quick as lightning, he seized the branch of cane which I had thrown on the ground, and before I had time to place myself in a posture of defence, showered blow after blow on my arms and legs.—[Page 33.]
After a time, finding the heat, striking on the open spot where I was standing, somewhat oppressive, I endeavoured, while the disposition of my guards seemed a trifle more to my advantage, to take a few steps in advance. I was, in fact, frightfully hungry, and my lips were parched with thirst. No sooner, however, had I prepared to change my position than all these groups of importunate apes, gathering more closely around me, recommenced their cries and their menaces. They did more, they formed a square; and when they had taken up this strategical position, of which I occupied the centre, one of them, leaving the ranks, advanced towards me. Quick as lightning he seized the branch of cane which I had thrown on the ground; and, before I had time to place myself in a posture of defence, showered blow after blow on my arms and legs, my feet and hands, my face and head, and on my back and sides. These blows followed one another in such rapid succession that, not being able to run away, I commenced bounding about, jumping as though there were blazing coals beneath my feet.
I candidly confess that I suffered quite as much shame as pain. A vile ape was belabouring me, an abominable brute was taking upon himself to administer correction to me in broad daylight! Other miserable apes, witnesses of my moral degradation, were making grimaces and grinning at me, and showing their enjoyment by capering about. It was whilst I thus performed a part in a comedy before their eyes, and they furnished me an occasion of observing them more closely, that I was seized with a singular idea; but the trouble I was in prevented me from following it up. Ah! my position was indeed a painful one, to be thrashed by an ape before an assembly of apes! It is only animals who can introduce such a degree of refinement into cruelty. I know very well that at London, which has the reputation of being an extremely civilised city, people are ready to crush one another to death, when a criminal is hanged before the door of Newgate; and that in Paris, people pay equally dear for places to see a man executed; that it is the same at Brussels, Vienna, and Berlin—nevertheless, spite of the attractions which an execution offers, we neither hang nor decapitate apes; and the right which these animals arrogated to themselves of cudgelling me, appeared to me to be founded neither in reason nor in justice. For the moment they were of course the stronger, and it was necessary that I should give in to them; and I did give in. But it was melancholy to feel that there appeared to be no end to this punishment; my tormentor never once relaxed his exertions, to take even a moment’s rest; but continued laying on his blows, as though he would never tire.
Certainly, with one of the two pistols which I had about me, and which I had been prudent enough not to part with, I could easily have shot the impudent beast through the head; but I remembered too well the accident which happened to a certain president of the French East India Company, to attempt any such thing. One day, when the celebrated French traveller Tavernier accompanied the president on an excursion through some great forest on the banks of the Ganges, the latter, being astounded at the immense number of apes which he saw, and which suddenly surrounded him just as they had surrounded me, stopped his carriage, and desired Tavernier to knock two or three of them over. The servants, knowing very well the vindictive dispositions of these animals, begged of the president not to meddle with them. He, however, insisted, and Tavernier fired, and killed a female with her young. At that very instant the other apes threw themselves, with cries of rage and despair, on the president’s carriage. They knocked over the coachman, the footmen, and the horses, and would have strangled his lordship—torn him to pieces, indeed—if the windows of the carriage had not been promptly closed, and the members of his suite had not engaged in a regular fight with their assailants, from whom they only escaped with an infinite deal of trouble.
The remembrance of the danger which menaced them restrained me from discharging my weapon at the horrible animal, who still continued his blows, spite of my ill-concealed rage, and the efforts which I made to protect myself, Alas! I could do nothing. I was thrashed by him till the blood flowed from me and saturated my garments. I should have assuredly sunk under the constant succession of blows meted out to me, since the cunning and wickedness of these animals went so far as to induce them to volunteer to relieve my tormentor, when he at length felt fatigued with his exertions; yes, I should certainly have fallen a victim to their brutality, but for an idea, a really admirable idea, which occurred to me; but which, unfortunately, like all excellent ideas, came very late. The increased pain which I endured evidently freshened up my memory; and, all of a sudden, it struck me that I had heard of travellers, who found themselves in the same predicament as myself, escaping by means of a ruse, which ruse I resolved for my part at once to employ. I therefore proceeded to untie my cravat (a superb cravat, bought in Bengal the preceding year), and, unfolding it, threw it among the crowd of apes, who no sooner caught sight of my bright red neckerchief than they rushed forward in a body to seize it, with loud chatterings, and other signs of curiosity and delight. My tormentor followed the example of his fellows; and, whilst they disputed among themselves the possession of the spoil which I had resigned to them, I ran off, with all possible speed, towards the interior of the island, where I reckoned on meeting with some of the inhabitants, and certainly on procuring a little water, to quench my intolerable thirst. After a breathless run of five or six hundred yards I looked back, and had the satisfaction of finding that none of the apes were following me. For an entire hour I continued to run in this manner over a tract of soft sand, through groups of trees entwined together, and forming bright masses of foliage of various colours, and which by-and-by bowed down to the earth, indicating a hollow where I might possibly find water. I was thoroughly fatigued, I was in a burning heat. Was I about to discover the water I so ardently longed for?
On rounding a hill covered with a whitish green moss, I was suddenly struck by the sight of a lake upwards of a mile in length, bordered by tall trees, ranged in a series of terraces, as though they had been planted thus by a professor of landscape gardening. A slight descent, along the same soft silvery turf which I had just now passed over, conducted me to the brink of a clear, sparkling sheet of water. I knelt down to drink, and, placing my parched lips in it, my ecstasy was so complete that I prolonged it for nearly a quarter of an hour, partaking at intervals of draught after draught of the reviving delicacy.
My enjoyment was like a dream, it was so concentrated and so tranquil. But the cry which escaped me on raising my head, was not altogether one of gratitude towards Heaven, to whom I owed the delicious joy of having been enabled thus to refresh myself. Intense surprise had something to do with my exclamation.
The banks of the lake were covered along their entire length by those very apes who had so pitilessly tormented, jeered at, and beaten me.—[Page 36.]