The man among the monkeys; or, Ninety days in apeland / To which are added: The philosopher and his monkeys, The professor and the crocodile, and other strange stories of men and animals

by Léon Gozlan

I was far more distressed at my cruel action, although I hardly need have been, since I had killed the vervet while I was still stupefied by sleep and under the influence of a dream. When I returned to the place whence I had fired the pistol, I was grieved to discover that the shot which had killed one vervet had, unfortunately, wounded another of the group into the midst of which I had so recklessly fired. All the other apes belonging to the same species had assembled round their wounded companion, and were placing their fingers in his wound, as though they wished to probe it. While some kept it open, others brought leaves which they chewed and gently placed in the wound itself. This last act upset all my preconceived ideas with regard to the intelligence of these animals, so badly treated, by some naturalists, who have confounded inferior kinds with species like those of the vervets, that almost approach our own, falling into the same error as that ignorant observer who placed in the same rank, under the pretext that they were both men, the cretin of the Alps and the admirably-organised inhabitant of Italy or Greece. Since this example of apes rendering one another mutual help in time of danger, and nursing one another with the aid of special remedies known only to themselves, has frequently come before my eyes, I have not hesitated to relate one instance of which I was an eye-witness, in the hope of making the reader share the surprise and interest which it awakened in me.

My poor apes at length retired, carrying with them their wounded companion, and leaving me one sorrow more to add to those which already oppressed me. I spent a miserable day, haunted by remorse for my crime. I could not banish from my mind the piteous expression of these poor animals, and the mingled look of goodness, gentleness, suffering, and resignation imprinted in their features, so utterly distinct from those of other apes, from whom they appeared completely separated, not by the mere effect of chance, or by the boundary which the difference of genius had raised between them.

When night came on I had already left the actors and the theatre of these events far behind me. About midnight, on hearing, in a wood of mimosas, and seemingly quite close to me, an indefinable rustling, such as the dry husks of the bread-tree produce when driven about by the wind, I remembered all at once that I had forgotten to reload my pistols. Before proceeding another step I charged them with ball, and advanced cautiously towards the spot whence the noise appeared to proceed. I approached slowly on tiptoe, holding my breath, and with my heart beating violently, as I gently pushed aside the thorny branches of the mimosas, and raised them again with the same prudent caution. I stretched forth my neck, and by the light of the moon, which shone as brightly as on the preceding evening, I perceived a skeleton suspended from the branch of a tree—a skeleton, too, of huge size: its bones, which were white as ivory, stood out from the dark green leaves with a power of relief which added considerably to the terror of its aspect. As I watched it swinging to and fro in the wind, the sensation which I experienced was by no means an agreeable one, and a nervous shudder passed through my limbs. Eventually I reasoned with myself, and decided not to draw too sinister a conclusion from a circumstance which perhaps, after all, did not partake of that degree of atrocity that my imagination had hastily pictured.

I now walked boldly up to the skeleton, and sought to catch hold of its foot, but the foot proved to be a hand. The skeleton was evidently that of an ape—an ape, too, of the largest kind; in other words, a gigantic mandrill. Yes, a mandrill—that enemy of the baboon with whom it shares the empire of ferocity and terror. I considered, from the size of the skeleton, that the ape to which it belonged must have surpassed, in size and strength, all known examples of this formidable species. But how came he to be suspended here, I asked myself? And why was it that his skin had been entirely removed? Not the least fragment of it was to be seen at the foot of the tree. Had he been flayed after being hung, and had his death then been stamped with all the forms of a degrading punishment?

As my reflections, under the shadow of this improvised gibbet, failed to produce any kind of solution of the above enigma, I hastened to leave the spot, pondering over in my mind as to the proportion of apes and men occupying this spot of earth in the midst of the sea. One will easily comprehend that my mind was constantly indulging in speculations—first of all as to the probability of the island being inhabited, and then as to the particular kind of people who dwelt therein.

Whilst I was asking myself these questions for the thousandth time, as I walked straight on without knowing whither I was going, it seemed to me that the light of the moon underwent, for some minutes, a notable diminution. What, thought I, could possibly be the cause of this? I raised my head. The moon’s disk was really clouded by a reddish mist, slightly tinted with grey. This mist was evidently not a cloud. Moreover, in so pure an atmosphere, a cloud, the sign of wind and tempest, would have passed over much higher in the sky. At one time it seemed so low that it occurred to me it was some exhalation from the lake, a vapour produced by the vast collections of vegetable remains accumulated on its margin. To put an end to my doubts on this score, I climbed up a tree, and there I discovered—victory and release from my enforced captivity—that it was the smoke from a fire burning in the interior of the island. A fire! The island was undoubtedly inhabited, then—inhabited, too, by human beings, since man alone can procure himself fire, man alone knows how to use it, and man alone has need of it. I was then among beings of my own kind. I was saved—or perhaps lost! Nevertheless it was a fact that I was among members of the human family. Acting on this conviction, I thought it only prudent to slip a second bullet into each of my pistols.

Collecting together all my scattered faculties, I imposed upon them the task of guiding me in the direction in which I supposed this fire to be, and the object of which was now a source of some anxiety to me. Did it indicate one of those extraordinary conflagrations, in producing which the savages of Oceania have frequently no other motive beyond destroying, in a few hours, vast tracts of forests, that they may gratify themselves with a most sublime sight? Did it betray the presence of a band of pirates, arrived perhaps in the island during this very evening, and sharing their booty by the light of some immense fire which they had kindled in accordance with their prevailing habits of destruction? Did it indicate the chief settlement of the native population, who, during the hours of universal silence, were giving themselves up to certain wild rejoicings, or were engaged in consummating some nocturnal sacrifice under the mysterious light of the moon?

The hope that I was at length about to find myself among members of the human family was dimmed by the reflection that these men would certainly not be finished models of civilisation, for I was not ignorant of the fact that many islands of Oceania have been, since the creation of the world, and are likely to continue for a long time to come, nothing more than nests of cannibals. Cannibals, however, do not always eat people any more than serpents always sting them, so there was, at any rate, one chance in my favour out of something like a score of chances against me. Moreover, hope does not reason for itself like fear is apt to do.

Without stopping to admire the magnificence of the night, magnificent even to me, accustomed as I was to the incomparable nights of the southern hemisphere; without lending an ear to the different harmonies composed of notes of a character utterly unknown to me, since it must not be forgotten that every island of Oceania is a world apart, a complete universe in itself, often having its flowers, its plants, its birds, its reptiles, and its human occupants, different from the men, reptiles, birds, plants, and flowers of the island adjoining; without pausing to examine anything, no matter however strange or ravishing, I continued to advance in a straight line towards that part of the island where I thought the fire which I had seen from afar must be burning.