Touched with so many marks of abject humility, the august baboon would every now and then take from one of the side pouches of his mouth a mass of masticated nuts or fruit, and throw it into the faces of those servile officials who surrounded him, and who, regarding the act as a mark of gracious condescension on his part, received it with the most lively contortions of pleasure.
Some old ourang-outangs, who had formerly lived with the incriminated vervets, being, I am convinced, on the point of pronouncing a decision in the prisoners’ favour, what do you think the big baboon did, as soon as he perceived the first indication of this misplaced pity of theirs? He rolled his vulture-like eyes under his puckered eyelids, and showed his horrible gums behind a smile formed by two wrinkled lips, and in an instant the misplaced clemency of the old ourang-outangs utterly vanished.
The baboon now threw his staff of justice into the middle of the arena. This it seems was intended as a signal, for immediately afterwards the apes, to whom were delegated the functions of carrying out the sentences pronounced by the supreme court, commenced showering down blows with sticks of bamboo on the poor condemned prisoners, whom they thrashed with an unheard-of severity, driving them clean out of the inclosure and chasing them at last into the very depths of the forest.
This savage act of justice appeared to me as though it were chiefly intended to increase the authority which the big baboon evidently exercised over the apish community, since no sooner was the sitting concluded than the siamangs, magots, and talapoins rushed forward to congratulate him, to stroke and lick him, to jump upon his back and salute him with respect, mingled with fear.
CHAPTER V.
The court-martial breaks up.—I secretly follow the members of it.—I distinguish some houses between the trees, and believe myself to be at last among my fellow-men.—My hopes are crushed by discovering the devastated condition of the settlement.—I meet with Saïmira and Mococo, the latter in captivity.—I recognise in the president of the court-martial one of my two baboons of Macao.—This discovery troubles me, the more so when I find that Karabouffi’s power is supreme.—Foreseeing the peril I should be in if recognised by him, I hide myself in a grotto.—I am visited by Saïmira.—Weariness becomes at length more intolerable than danger.—The light already seen reappears.—I leave my retreat in search of it.
