“But how do they accomplish it? To make a bridge requires a skilled engineer among men; are there such among monkeys?”
“Well, young master, I won’t call it such skill; but it’s very like it. When on their grand journeyings they come to a stream, or even an igarápe like this, and find they can’t leap from the trees on one side to those growing on the other, it is then necessary for them to make the bridge. They go up or down the bank till they find two tall trees opposite each other. They climb to a high branch on the one, and then, linking together, as you’ve seen them, they set their string in motion, and swing backward and forward, till one at the end can clutch a branch of the tree, on the opposite side. This done the bridge is made, and all the troop, the old ones that are too stiff to take a great leap, and the young ones that are too weak, run across upon the bodies of their stouter comrades. When all have passed over, the monkey at the other end of the string lets go his hold upon the branch; and if he should be flung into water it don’t endanger him, as he instantly climbs up the bodies of those above him, the next doing the same, and the next also, until all have got safe into the trees.”
“Be japers,” exclaimed Tipperary Tom, “it’s wonderful how the craythers can do it! But, Misther Munday, have yez iver seen them fall from a tree-top?”
“No, never, but I’ve known one to leap from the top of a tree full a hundred feet in height.”
“Shure it was kilt dead then?”
“If it was it acted very oddly for a dead animal, as it had scarce touched the ground when it sprang back up another tree of equal height, and scampered to the top branches nearly as quick as it came down.”
“Ah!” sighed Trevannion, “if we had only the activity of these creatures, how soon we might escape from this unfortunate dilemma. Who knows what is before us? Let us pray before going to rest for the night. Let us hope that He, in whose hands we are, may listen to our supplications, and sooner or later relieve us from our misery.” And so saying, the ex-miner repeated a well-remembered prayer, in the response to which not only the young people, but the Indian, the African, and the Irishman fervently joined.