"'She vos no man, sir. I vos close. I vent closer don you. I oxpect, sir,' said the Dutchman, 'she's an imp. Strange dot I did not see him till I was upon her.'
"The captain went swiftly to his cabin for a binocular glass. The lenses helped him to determine the motionless shadow in the cross-trees, and he clearly distinguished an apparently large human shape, but in what fashion, or whether or not habited, it was impossible to see. How had he come into the ship? The captain went on to the poop and searched the silent sea with the glass with some fancy of finding a boat within reach of his vision. Nothing was to be seen but the glass-smooth face of the deep, with here and there the light of a large trembling star draining into it. The catspaw had died out, and it mattered nothing whether they braced the fore-yards round or not.
"It got wind in the forecastle that something wild, unearthly, hellish, was aloft, and the watch below turned out, too restless to sleep, and all through those hours of darkness the sailors walked the decks in groups, again and again staring up at the foretopmast cross-trees, where the mysterious bulk of blackness sate, squatted, or hung motionless, like some brooding fiend, or incarnation of ill-luck, sinking by force of meditation its curses not loud, but deep, into the bottom of the very hold itself.
"'Why don't the captain let me shoot him?' said the second mate at four o'clock. 'I cannot miss that mark; my rifle will bring him to your feet at the cost of a single shot.'
"'No,' said the chief mate, 'I've talked of trying what shooting will do. The captain means to wait for sunlight. But how did it get on board?' said he, sinking his voice in awe. 'There's no land for hundreds of leagues. Is it some sort of human sea-monster, some merman whose looks blind you with their ugliness, which this ship's been doomed to discover, and perhaps carry home?'
"It was not long before day whitened the east. In those climates the morning is a quick revelation, and hardly had the dawn broke when sea and sky were lighted up. And then, and even then, what was it? There it sat up in the cross-trees, a hairy, sulky bulk of man or beast, black, and the creature looked hard down whilst all hands were staring hard up.
"Seized if it isn't a gorilla!" said the mate.
"'No.' said the captain, letting fall his binocular, 'look for yourself. Yet, it's not a man, either.' He burst into a laugh as though for relief. 'It's a huge, hairy baboon, one of the biggest I ever saw in my life. He'll be as fierce as a mutinous crew, and strong as a frigate's complement. What's to be done with him?'
"'How in Egypt did he come on board?' said the mate, viewing the beast through the glass.
"'By that, maybe, sir,' exclaimed the second mate, pointing to some object floating flat and yellow, faint and far out upon the starboard quarter.