"And to think that I was going to play a trick with the empty cocoanut shell, just a little while before this happened to me," thought Mappo, as he tried very hard to get loose from the net in which he was all tangled up. "I wonder what has happened to me, anyhow," said Mappo to himself.
And, as Mappo did not find out for some little time I will tell you. He had been caught by a native hunter, in a net made from long pieces of a trailing vine, which was as strong as a rope.
In the country where Mappo lived there were many people called natives—that is they had never lived in any country but their own, and they were a queer sort of people.
They wore very few clothes, for it was too hot to need many. They were a black, savage people, and they lived by hunting with their spears, and bows and arrows. They hunted wild animals—lions, tigers, elephants and monkeys. Some of the wild animals they used for food, and others they sold to white men who wanted them for circuses and menageries. And monkeys were generally the easiest to catch.
Some of these black, half-clothed, savage natives had spread a vine net in the forest. The net, being made of vines, could not be seen until some animal got close to it. And to make monkeys come close to the net, so it would fall down over them, when one end was pulled loose by a native (hidden behind a tree) bits of cocoanut were sprinkled about. Monkeys are very fond of cocoanut, and the natives knew, when the little long-tailed creatures went to pick up the white pieces, that they would come nearer and nearer to the trap-net, until they were caught. That was what had happened to Mappo.
The little monkey tried and tried again to break out of the net, but he could not. It was too strong. Tighter and tighter it was pulled about him, until he could struggle no more. He lay there, a sad little lump of monkey in the net.
Then some black men, with long sharp sticks, or spears, gathered about him, and talked very fast and loud. You would not have understood what they said, if you had heard them, any more than you can understand dog and cat talk, but Mappo knew some of what they were saying, for he had lived in the jungle all his life, and these were natives, or jungle men.
"Ha! We caught only one monkey!" exclaimed one tall, black man, with a long spear.
"Well, but he is a good one," another man said. "We will take him to the coast in a box, and sell him to the white men who will take him away in a ship. We will get many things for him, lots of beads to put around our necks, some brass wire to make rings for our noses and ankles, and red cloth to wear."
The natives, you see, did not want money. They wanted beads and bits of shiny brass wire, or gay-colored cloth, to make themselves look, as they thought, very fine. They even put rings in their noses, as well as in their ears, to decorate themselves.