Mappo, the Merry Monkey Part 8

Away up to the top he went, and, curling his tail around a rope, there he sat.

"Make him come down!" cried the captain. "I can't have a monkey on top of my ship's mast! Somebody climb up after him and bring him down."

"I'll go," said a sailor.

Now a sailor is a good climber, but not nearly so good as a monkey.

Mappo waited until the sailor was almost up to him, and then, quick as a flash, Mappo swung himself out of the way by another rope, and, just as he had done in the jungle, he went over to the top of another mast.

"There he goes!" cried the sailors on deck.

"Yes, I see he does," said the sailor who had tried to catch Mappo.

"You had better come down," spoke the man who had let Mappo out of the cage. "I think he'll come down for me." In his hand he held some lumps of sugar, of which Mappo was very fond.

"Come on down, old chap," called the sailor. "No one will hurt you. Come and get the sugar."

Now whether Mappo had had enough of being loose, or whether it was too cold for him up on the mast, I can't say. Perhaps he wanted the sugar, and, again, he might not have wanted to make trouble for his kind friend, the sailor, who had let him out.

Anyhow, Mappo came slowly down, and took some of the sugar from the sailor's hand. The sailor took hold of the collar around Mappo's neck.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Away up to the top he went, and, curling his tail around a rope, there he sat. (Page 71)]

"Now lock up that monkey!" cried the captain. "And if he runs away again, we'll whip him."

"No, it was my fault," the sailor said. "And I'd like him to be loose.

I can teach him some tricks."

"All right, do as you like," the captain spoke. "Only keep him off the mast."

"I'm not going up there again," thought Mappo to himself. "It is too cold."

"Come along," said the sailor, giving him another lump of sugar, and Mappo put one hairy little paw in the hand of the sailor, and walked along the deck with him.

"I guess you were just scared, old fellow," the man said to the monkey.

"When you get quieted down, you and I shall have lots of fun. You are almost as nice as my elephant, Tum Tum."

This was the first Mappo had heard of the elephant. He knew what they were, for he had often seen the big creatures in the jungle, crashing their way through the trees, even pulling some up by the roots, in their strong trunks, to eat the tender green tops of the trees.

"I didn't know there was an elephant on this ship," thought Mappo. But he was soon to find out there was.

Two or three days after this Mappo was let out of his cage once more.

This time he did not jump and run. He stayed quietly beside the sailor, and put his paw into the man's hand.

"That's the way to do it," said the sailor. "Come now, we'll go below and see Tum Tum."

Down into a deep part of the ship, near the bottom, the sailor took Mappo. Then the monkey could see a number of elephants chained to the walls. They were swaying their big bodies to and fro, and swinging their trunks. The sailor went up to the biggest elephant of them all, and, so Mappo thought, the most jolly-looking, and said:

"Tum Tum, I have brought some one to see you. Here is a little monkey."

Mappo looked up, and saw a jolly twinkle in the little eyes of Tum Tum.

Mappo knew elephants were never unkind to monkeys, and, a moment later, Mappo had given a jump, up to the shoulder of the sailor, and then right on the back of Tum Tum.

CHAPTER VII

MAPPO IN THE CIRCUS

"Well, I declare!" exclaimed the sailor who had brought Mappo downstairs in the ship to see Tum Tum, the jolly elephant. "You two animals seem to get along fine together!"

And indeed Mappo and Tum Tum were the best of friends at once. Elephants and monkeys very seldom quarrel, and they live together in peace, even in the jungle, and do not fight, and bite and scratch, as some wild beasts do.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Mappo to Tum Tum, as the little monkey sat on the elephant's back. "h.e.l.lo!"

"h.e.l.lo yourself!" answered Tum Tum, and his voice was deep and rumbling, away down in his long nose or trunk, while Mappo's was chattery and shrill, as a monkey's voice always is.

"Well, where did you come from?" asked Mappo. "I've often seen you, or some elephant friends of yours in the jungle. How did you get on this ship with the other animals? You don't mean to say that the hunter men caught you--you, a great big strong elephant, do you?"

"That's just what they did, Mappo," said Tum Tum, and the sailor, looking at the two animals, did not know they were telling secrets to each other.

"I'll just leave 'em together a while," said the sailor. "I don't believe the monkey will run away, and, as he's getting homesick, it may make him feel better to be with the elephant a while."

Mappo was indeed getting homesick for the jungle, and for his folks, but when he saw Tum Tum, he felt much better.

"How did they catch you?" asked the monkey, as the sailor went up on deck, while Mappo and the elephant stayed down in the lower part of the ship, where it was nice and warm, talking to one another.

"Oh, the hunters made a big, strong fence in the jungle," said Tum Tum.

"They left one opening in it, and then they began to drive us elephants along toward it. We did not know what was happening until it was too late, and at last we were caught fast in a sort of big trap, and could not get out."

"I should think you were so strong that you could easily have gotten out," Mappo said.

"Well, we did try--we wild elephants," spoke Tum Tum. "We rushed at the bamboo fence, and tried to break it down with our big heads. But tame elephants, who had helped to drive us into the trap, came up, and struck us with their trunks, and stuck us with their tusks, and told us to be good, and not to break the fence, and that we would be kindly treated.

So we behaved, and, after a while, we found ourselves on this ship."

"Do you like it here?" asked Mappo.

"Well, it isn't so bad," said Tum Tum. "I get all I want to eat, and I don't have to hunt for it. I am to go in a circus and menagerie, I hear.

I don't quite know what that is, do you?"

"Not exactly," answered Mappo, scratching his nose.

"Well, maybe we'll be in it together," went on Tum Tum. "But how did you happen to get caught, and brought away from the jungle, little monkey?"

Then Mappo told of being caught in the net when he picked up the pieces of cocoanut.

"Were any other animals caught with you?" asked Tum Tum.