"The captain levelled the ship's telescope. 'A large raft!' he exclaimed, after some minutes of silent examination. 'Take a boat and examine it.'
"A quarter-boat was lowered, and the second mate and four men pulled away for the raft in the distance. It was a very large raft, manifestly launched by some country wallah in the last throes: a complicate huge grating, or floating platform, of immensely thick bamboos and spare spars, secured by turns of Manilla or coir rope. It was clean swept; not a rag was to be seen. Whether the sufferers had been taken off, leaving the baboon behind them, whether they had died, and the wash of the ocean had slipped their bodies overboard, the baboon holding on to the raft, who was to tell? 'At sea,' said Lord Nelson, 'nothing is impossible and nothing improbable.'
"The raft had floated to the bows of the ship in the silent midnight, and the baboon sprang aboard and aloft.
"The creature on high was a clear picture in the bright sunshine. It made many dreadful grimaces, by the exhibition of its teeth, and when the boat drew alongside it moved and stood up, and showed a great tail, then hung with one fist, looking down. It next descended with the velocity of wind into the foretop.
"The captain said: 'The beast don't seem faint, but I guess he's thirsty, and he may fall mad, come down, and bite some of us. So,' says he to the chief officer, 'send a hand aloft with a bucket of fresh water for the poor brute and a pocketful of ship's bread. If we can civilise him, so much the better.'
"But it never came to it," said the grey-haired respectable seaman. "The creature fled to the cross-trees nimble as light when he saw a couple of seamen mounting to the top, then descended, and ate and drank ravenously when they had come down, which feeding murdered him, and ruined the captain's hopes of carrying the fellow to London and selling him at a large price to the Zoölogical Gardens. For he refused to come on deck. He bared his teeth, and his eyes shone with the malice of hell if the men attempted to approach him. It was impossible to let him rest aloft throughout the night to command the ship, so to speak; for he might sink to the deck stealthy as the shadow of a cloud blown by the wind, and he was strong enough and big enough to tear a sleeping man's throat out.
"'He must be shot,' said the captain, and he told the second mate to fetch his rifle.
"The second mate, that he might make sure of his aim, went aloft into the foretop. The beast was then sitting on the topgallant yard. He had been in command of the fabric of the fore all day. Had it come on to blow so as to oblige the captain to shorten sail, the deuce a seaman durst have gone aloft to stow the canvas. The second mate, standing in the top, was in the act of lifting his rifle, when the monster, running on all fours out to the dizzy topgallant yard-arm, stood erect a breathless instant, poised—in human posture—a marvellous picture of the man-beast against the liquid blue, then sprang into the air.
"'Come down,' roared the captain to the second mate, 'and shoot him through the head, for God's sake!'
"As the beast rose with a wild grin after having been so long out of sight through the frightful height he had jumped from, you'd have thought he'd have risen with a burst skin, the captain bawled out, 'Blessed if he's not making for his raft.'