As may be supposed, all Macao was in commotion at the event. However, the law was strong, and the whole of the apes were eventually embarked.
It would be impossible to give an idea, either by the aid of language or of painting, of the dark and revengeful looks which the solitary baboon directed towards me when I re-entered the menagerie after his companions’ departure.
I question whether the most irritated and malignant of men, burning with feelings of suppressed hatred, ever condensed such unmistakable threats of vengeance into his eyes as I could read in those of the infuriated baboon. I saw there a positive hankering after blood, and that blood, moreover, my own.
Nearly a year had elapsed since this extensive sale of apes, on which I had, as the reader may suppose, realised enormous profits, when one night I woke up suffocated by a dense smoke which seemed to rise from the crevices in the floor of my room. This flooring, which was composed of very thin boards, extended above the menagerie. I found myself positively choking, and rose from my bed with infinite difficulty, and directed my steps towards the window, which I immediately flung open. Indeed, I opened every window and door so as not to perish of suffocation. But directly the air had penetrated into the apartment, it was no longer smoke that I had to contend with, but fire, which, running along the cracks of the floor, enveloped ere long the whole house in a blaze.
My first thought was to save my poor mother, but I was, alas! too late. The back part of the house, where her room was situated, was the first to be filled with smoke, and my poor mother must have been suffocated before she could call out for assistance. For myself, I was dragged from the room where I wished to die. My neighbours saved me, carried me into the street, and placed me on a stone bench, from whence I saw my entire establishment consumed before my eyes. Through the broken door, through the open entrance of the bazaar, I was a witness of a spectacle which I shall never forget.
In the midst of the devouring flames, which were roasting my finest birds, and in which my superb tigers were writhing with fearful cries, nobody meanwhile daring to approach near enough to attempt to rescue them, the baboon, a lighted brand in each hand, danced, chuckled, grinned, and frisked about with a hideous kind of joy. His attitude, his impudent looks, indeed everything about his frightful expression, sufficiently proved him to be the author of the conflagration—he who, in the course of a long-meditated night of vengeance, had managed to procure some matches with which he had seen the keeper of an evening light up the bazaar; he who, breaking his chains and the bars of his cage, had first turned on the gas, and after allowing it to escape had then set light to it. Such was the supreme vengeance of this terrible baboon, Karabouffi the Second.
One of my neighbours shot him as he was dancing in the midst of the flames. But I was not the less ruined; I had not the less lost my excellent mother.
Under the weight of so many afflictions, and so much misery, I resolved to change my profession; remembering rather late my poor father’s admonition. For more than two years I traded in ivory, feathers, and furs; but not being versed in this kind of traffic, I made only moderate profits, and entertained no hope whatever of realising any very great ones in future. Moreover, this mode of life, less active than what I had been accustomed to, did not please me; my former pursuit was continually recalled to my mind by the enticing nature of my studies in natural history. I regretted it even for the dangers with which it was beset, and of which I have already spoken. At last, after a good deal of hesitation, I determined to follow it again. I was still young; several thousand piastres were lying to my credit with M. Silvao, banker at Goa. I had the means of re-establishing my business; but it was necessary for me to undertake two or three journeys to the islands of Oceania, and join the great hunters of wild beasts and birds of prey, with whom I counted upon scouring the woods and swamps. It was a hardy and adventurous course to follow; still there was no other way of re-stocking my establishment at Macao. I hesitated for a time, I admit; but after awhile I took leave of my few relations and my numerous friends, and made the final preparations for my voyage. I ought not to omit to say that I had chartered a Chinese junk on my own account, and that I had it at my service for an entire year. My first destination was Australia, that immense island, as large as a continent, where I was certain, according to the accounts of travellers, to find some of the most varied and least known animals of creation.
I set sail on the 3rd of July, 1850, in the junk which I had chartered, and which did not make up for its great weight by any unusual strength. It was an old tub of a thing, none the better for its numerous voyages to Corea and Japan. Formerly it had been able to resist bad weather, but, for all that, it could only boast at the present time of somewhat shaky ribs and planks, scarcely to be relied on in rough weather, for anything that Master Ming-Ming, its very indulgent captain, might say.
My first point of debarkation being New Holland or Australia, we steered direct south on quitting Macao.