Fifty exclamations of this kind rolled along the bulwarks, where the sailors had gathered in their full company to watch the effect of the shot. There was no glass within reach of me; but my sight was keen, and at the first blush I believed that the hull had been a slaver, that she had capsized when full of negroes, and that our round-shot had made a man-hole aft big enough for them to escape through. There were twenty or thirty of them. They came thrusting through the aperture with extraordinary agility, and most of them held a very firm seat on the clean line of the keel. But every now and again one or another of them would lose his balance and slide down the hard bright surface of the yellow sheathing upon the round of the bilge plump into the water, where you would observe him making frantic but idle efforts to reclimb the wet and slippery slope.
‘Monkeys, as I am a man!’ roared Mr. Prance.
‘A cargo of monkeys, sir!’ shouted the skipper from the other end of the poop, whilst he kept his glasses levelled at the wreck.
A sort of groaning note of astonishment, followed by a wild shout of laughter, came along from the Jacks. Indeed, one needed to look hard at the thing to believe in it, so incredibly odd was the incident. One moment the wreck was a mere curve of naked yellow sheathing flashing to the sun as it rolled; the next, pouff! went the thunder of the gun, and as though its grinning adamantine lips owned some magical and diabolical potency of invocation, lo! the hole made by the shot was vomiting monkeys, and in a trice the radiant rounds of the keel-up fabric were covered with the figures of squatting, clinging, grinning creatures of all sizes, some like little hairy babies, some like men as large at least as Mr. Saunders.
‘There’ll be a human being rising out of that hole before long, I expect,’ said Mr. Prance. ‘He must needs be slower than the monkeys if he’s a man. How many d’ye make, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Some thirty or forty,’ said I. ‘But I tell you what, Mr. Prance: there’ll be none left in a few minutes, for the hull is sinking rapidly.’
At that instant Captain Keeling sung out: ‘Mr. Prance—have one of the quarter-boats manned. It is as I thought—the hull was floating on the air in her hold, and she’s settling fast. We can’t let those poor creatures drown. Get the main topsail backed.’
A boat’s crew came bundling aft to the cry of the mate; in a mighty hurry the gripes were cast adrift, and the tackles slackened away with the men in their places, and the fourth officer in the stern sheets shipping the rudder as the boat sank. There was a deal of confusion for the moment, what with the tumbling aft of the sailors, the passengers getting out of their road, the hubbub of ladies’ voices, and the cries of the seamen dragging upon the weather main-braces to back the yards.
‘There she goes!’ cried I; ‘there’ll not be many of the creatures rescued, I believe. Monkeys are indifferent swimmers.’
‘Lively now, Mr. Jenkinson,’ yelled Mr. Prance to the fourth officer, ‘or they’ll all be drowned.’