“The most miserable objic’ I ever did see,” observed Disco.
The negroes looked at each other and laughed. They were accustomed to monkeys, and took little notice of them, but they were mightily tickled by Disco’s amusement, for he had laid down his knife and fork, and shook a good deal with internal chuckling, as he gazed upwards.
“One would suppose, now,” he said softly, “that it had recently seen its father and mother, and all its brothers and sisters, removed by a violent death, or sold into slavery.”
“Ha! they never see that,” said Harold; “the brutes may fight and kill, but they never enslave each other. It is the proud prerogative of man to do that.”
“That’s true, sir, worse luck, as Paddy says,” rejoined Disco. “But look there: wot’s them coorious things round the creetur’s waist—a pair o’ the werry smallest hands—and, hallo! a face no bigger than a button! I do believe that it’s—”
Disco did not finish the sentence, but he was right. The small melancholy monkey was a mother!
Probably that was the cause of its sorrow. It is a touching thought that anxiety for its tiny offspring perhaps had furrowed that monkey’s visage with the wrinkles of premature old age. That danger threatened it on every side was obvious, for no sooner had it taken up its new position, after its unceremonious ejection by the fierce monkey, than the sprightly monkey, before referred to, conceived a plot which it immediately proceeded to carry into execution. Observing that the tail of the sad one hung down in a clear space below the branch on which it sat, the sprightly fellow quickly, but with intense caution and silence, crept towards it, and when within a yard or so sprang into the air and caught the tail!
A wild shriek, and what Disco styled a “scrimmage,” ensued, during which the mother monkey gave chase to him of the lively visage, using her arms, legs, and tail promiscuously to grasp and hold on to branches, and leaving her extremely little one to look out for itself. This it seemed quite capable of doing, for no limpet ever stuck to a solid rock with greater tenacity than did that infant to the maternal waist throughout the chase. The hubbub appeared to startle the whole monkey race, revealing the fact that troops of other monkeys had, unobserved, been gazing at the strangers in silent wonder, since the time of their landing.
Pleasant however, though this state of things undeniably was, it could not be expected to last. Breakfast being concluded, it became necessary that Disco should tear himself from the spot which, having first solaced himself with a pipe, he did with a good grace, remarking, as he re-embarked and “took the helm” of his canoe, that he had got more powerful surprises that morning than he had ever before experienced in any previous twelvemonth of his life.
Before long he received many more surprises, especially one of a very different and much less pleasant nature, an account of which will be found in the next chapter.