I had been, as I have already said, recognised.
After this bewildering noise of which I have just spoken all my old captives of Macao rushed upon me; their companions hastened to follow their example. I felt that I was about to be torn into as many pieces as my unfortunate cravat.
It was at this moment that I caught sight of the word Halcyon, the name of Vice-Admiral Campbell’s frigate, on the buttons of the coats worn by the leaders of this odious troop. The reader may judge of my astonishment at this discovery. Where was I? In the name of goodness, what had happened?
This I should probably never have known but for the cry uttered by Karabouffi at the very moment that I was disappearing under a mountain of baboons, apes, mandrills, magots, and ourang-outangs.
The thousand and one instantly let go their hold.
Karabouffi evidently had other intentions respecting me.
He uttered three distinct guttural cries, which were listened to with marked attention.
The order had gone forth, it was now about to be executed, and this is the way in which his behest was accomplished:—
On a signal from Karabouffi, these drolls of creation joined themselves together like bundles of snakes, and tying themselves to one another by their tails rapidly formed two chains. One of these living chains entwined itself round my neck, the other twisted itself about my legs, and I found myself, without being able to offer the least resistance, the connecting link, as it were, of these two chains, which soon formed only one, a kind of garland of apes, animated and convulsive. As soon as this operation was completed, the end of the chain which represented what one may style the head threw itself with the swiftness of an arrow to the other side of the crater; the end representing the tail did not move from where it was, and a giddy swinging movement at once commenced. Picture to yourself if you can my sad and ridiculous situation, swinging from right to left and from left to right over a fire a hundred feet broad, all smoking and blazing beneath me.