Each succeeding oscillation became quicker and quicker, owing, I presume, to the increasing recklessness of my tormentors, until I was swung from curve to curve, sixty feet on one side and sixty feet on the other; then—but how is it possible for me in the state of mind in which I then was to have calculated this frightful rate of progression? Twenty thousand spectators, or rather twenty thousand grimaces, twenty thousand contortions, fifty ranks deep, surrounded the opening of the crater, above which I was floating, looking like a forest of skins dotted with black and yellow muzzles, and bristling with teeth which gnashed and chattered without ceasing; and from one extremity to the other gigantic magots, quadrumanous constables armed with sticks, moved about to keep order during the entertainment—and what an entertainment, too, for even an ape to derive gratification from! At one moment I believed myself thrown into the clouds, at the next I felt the heat of the fire scorching my back. I say nothing of the pain which I suffered from being wrapped about and bound by those nervous cords which cut into my very skin. And, worse than all, I was not even at the end of my punishment.
The formidable swinging movement increased, the garland of apes, of which I formed part, soon overleaped its most elevated point of ascension, and then it was no longer a simple alternating movement, more or less perilous, that I had to undergo, but a rotatory motion, first rapid, then furious, and at last terrible. I had been, as it were, the balance of a pendulum; I was now a cart-wheel, the sails of a windmill, the stone in a sling; and I turned, and turned, and turned till I became first white, then red, then purple, then violet, and at last blue, and had quite lost my senses. I cried out; my cries of suffering, of despair, and fear were lost amidst the squealing huzzas and furious shriekings of these myriads of evil beings. When they had shaken and whirled me about to their hearts’ content, they brought their atrocious farce to a termination in the following manner:—Giving me a final and more furious shaking than any I had before experienced—ah! it makes my blood run cold to think of it—to the extreme curve of the chain, which, when it had attained the highest degree of gyratory violence, they all at once snapped asunder, breaking it at the centre, where I was fixed. The consequence was that I was flying like a ball across the crater, high above the enthusiastic spectators—above everything, in fact, to a distance of one or two hundred yards. Heaven only knows how I escaped being smashed to pieces on falling! Doubtless there were still further torments in store for me.
What were your thoughts, perhaps my readers will ask, while you were thus travelling through space in a manner so contrary to the usual habits of our kind? Why, I thought how very cruel we are when, to amuse ourselves, we send up cats or dogs in the car of a small balloon, and how very blamable I had been myself in one day attaching a poor kitten, who afterwards died from fright, to the tail of a large kite, for the purpose of amusing the idlers of Macao. I had been in my turn attached to the tail of a kite. What right had I to complain?
On coming to myself—and I am entirely ignorant how long the swoon which followed my horrible fall lasted—I perceived two mandrills of the most savage kind on guard, sword in hand, near me, imitating, so far as parody imitates truth, the gait and stiffness of English soldiers. Through want of experience, instead of confining themselves to placing a gaiter on each leg, every one of the mandrills had in addition placed a gaiter on each arm. I attributed this grotesque addition to simple ignorance, since there could be no such grade among apes as clothing colonels, ready at all times to decree any absurd addition to the soldier’s uniform, provided they could share the profit derived from it with the contractors. Slight as had been my opportunities of observing this automatic society, I nevertheless endeavoured to account to myself in a vague sort of way how it was that it came to offer a copy, fantastic and distorted though it might be, of the life of civilised man. Those uniform-buttons, already recognised by me in my hour of torture, furnished me with a clue. Unquestionably these half-intelligent animals and the men whose garments they were dragging about had lived together. My inference seemed so far undeniable. I had, however, still to discover how it was that the one had managed to obtain possession of the property of the other; but this was a question by no means easy to resolve all at once, particularly in the uncomfortable position in which I was placed. Just let the reader try to reflect when his head, the seat of reflection, is in perpetual fear of being broken by a blow from a bludgeon.
The two sentinels with the four gaiters, seeing me open my eyes, signalled to me to follow them. I mustered up all my strength and obeyed.
They conducted me in the direction of the devastated buildings which had excited my surprise some eight or ten days previously, when I was under the protection of the interesting Saïmira.
What had become of Saïmira?
What had become of Mococo?
What was about to become of me?
My two guardians introduced me, with some sharp blows dealt out to me with the flat side of their sabres, into one of the houses, the exterior of which was more pretentious in appearance than any of the others, and which I supposed, on this account, to have been the head-quarters of the station—the residence, in fact, of Vice-Admiral Campbell. The interior of the admiral’s house scarcely differed, so far as the desolate condition to which it was reduced was concerned, from the others. A kind of order, however, reigned in the midst of this lamentable chaos. For instance, the pictures, after having been removed from their hooks, had been placed back again, but upside down. I acknowledge that, so far as many of the pictures were concerned, this was a matter of no moment whatever, while for others it was a positive advantage. I should not be surprised if people generally became of my opinion after trying the effect of this reversing process on certain modern pictures in their collections.