The young gentleman named Graham shuddered as he turned away.
It was an hour after this that one of the midshipmen came into our berth, and said that a ship’s boat had been made out right ahead. Nothing living in her had as yet been distinguished.
“The notion of course is,” said he, “that she belonged to the wreck that we passed this morning.”
I was reading in my bunk, but on hearing this, I immediately hopped out and went on deck. There was more excitement now than before. A crowd of the passengers were staring from the poop, with knots of steerage folks and a huddle of the ship’s idlers on the forecastle, craning their necks under the bowsprit and past the jibs to get a view. Indeed, whilst the midshipmen had been telling us about this boat below, a glimpse had been caught of something moving over the low gunwale of her—some said it was a cap that had been waved; but whatever it was it had not shown again. However, everybody was now sure that there was something alive in the boat, and we all seemed to hold our breath whilst we waited. It was an ordinary ship’s quarter-boat painted white.
“There again!” shouted somebody. “Did you see it? A man’s head it looked like.”
“Ay,” said the second mate, who had his telescope bearing on the boat at the moment: “a head, and no mistake; but of what kind, though? More like a cocoa-nut, to my fancy, than a man’s nob.”
“There he is! there’s the poor creature!” cried a lady in a sort of shriek, with an opera-glass at her eyes. “He’s standing up—he has fallen backwards—ah! he’s up again. But, oh dear me!—can it be a man?”
“With a tail!” said the second mate, who continued to ogle the boat through his telescope. “Bless my heart!—why—why—captain, I believe it’s a great monkey!”
In a few minutes the boat was under the bow, and a strange roar of mingled wonder and laughter came floating aft to us from the crowd on the forecastle. It was a monkey, as the second mate had said—a big ape, with strong white whiskers, which ringed the lower part of his face like wool. He had evidently been some crew’s pet; a small velvet cap with a yellow tassel, like a smoking cap, was secured to his head; he also wore a pair of large spectacles apparently cut out of thin white wood. His body was clothed in a short jacket of some faded reddish material, with a slit behind for the convenience of his tail, the end of which was raw, as though he had been lately breakfasting off it. His legs were cased in their native hair, which was long, something like a goat’s.