The Lieutenant and Commander Part 10

"You b.l.o.o.d.y thundering rascal of a monkey!" bellowed the astounded topman; "let go the kid, or I'll shy this knife at your head!"

The threat was no sooner uttered than executed; for the sailor, without waiting to see the effect of his summons, threw the knife; and had not his saintship ducked his head, there would have been an end of monkey tricks for that cruise. As the glittering steel pa.s.sed before the wicked scamp's eyes, the flash deprived him of all recollection of the mischief in hand: with a loud yell he leaped on the booms, and in his terror let the prize slip from his grasp. It fell on the cooming of the hatchway, hung for one instant, and then dashed right down into the fore-c.o.c.kpit, to the infinite astonishment of the boatswain's yeoman, a thirsty soul, and familiar with drink in all its shapes, but who declared he never before had tried grog in a shower-bath.

Up started the enraged party of seamen on their feet. "All hands catch monkey!" was the cry; and in ten seconds the whole crew, including the cook with his ladle, and his mate with the tormentors in his hand, were seen scrambling on deck. Jacko scampered like lightning up the main-stay, and reached the top before any of the men, who had mounted the rigging, were half-a-dozen ratlines above the hammocks. The officers rushed to the quarter-deck, naturally fancying from the bustling sounds that a man was overboard; but they were soon undeceived by the shouts of laughter which resounded from every part of the ship, low and aloft.

For a few moments Jacko sat on the main-cap, chattering at such a rate that, had it been dark, one of the men said, you could have seen the sparks of fire from his teeth. I do not quite believe this; but certainly I never witnessed such an expression of fear. A dozen men were soon pouring into the top, while two others were stealing up the stay, and four or five had got into the topmast-shrouds, to cut off his retreat in that direction; finally, an active fellow leaped from the rigging to the topmast, and sliding down the well-greased spar, almost plumped on the devoted head of this master of the revels. It was now absolutely necessary for Jacko to do something; so he made a clear run down the main lift to the lower yard-arm. The gunner's mate foreseeing this manoeuvre, had sprung to guard his department, and had already lain out as far as the inner boom iron, with a gasket in his hand, and quite certain of catching the chase. Not a bit! "A gunner's mate catch a monkey!" The fable of the Tortoise and the Hare affords but a feeble simile to characterize such a match; and before old Hard-a-weather and his gasket had reached the yard-arm, our nimble Mona had trotted half-way up the leach of the topsail, and was seated as familiarly on the bridle of the maintop-bowline, as if he had been perched on the feathery branch of a cocoa-nut tree, enjoying the sea breeze, in his native island, amongst the beautiful Cape de Verdes.

The sailors were now fairly baffled, and still more so when the expert rogue chose to climb a little higher, and then to walk deliberately along the standing part of the main-topsail brace to the mizen-topmast head; whence, as if to divert himself, or force his pursuers to mingle admiration with their rage, he made a flying leap downwards to the peak haulyards, scampering along the single part till he reached the end of the gaff. There he sat laughing at a hundred and fifty men and boys, employed in the vain attempt to catch one monkey!

Sailors are certainly not men to give up a pursuit lightly; but after an hour of as hard labour as I ever witnessed, they were all obliged to relinquish the chase from sheer fatigue, and poor Jacko was pardoned by acclamation. The captain of the foretop, however, a couple of days afterwards, more out of fun than from any ill-will on the old grog score, gave the monkey's ear a pinch, upon which the animal snapped at his thumb, and bit it so seriously that the man was obliged to apply to the doctor. When this was reported to me by the surgeon, I began to think my four-footed friend was either getting rather too much licence, or that too many liberties were taken with him, so I gave orders that in future he should be let alone. Nevertheless, Jacko contrived to bite two more of the people, one of whom was the sergeant, the other the midshipmen's boy. These were all wounded in one day; and when the surgeon came to me next morning, as usual, with the sick-list in his hand, he was rather in dudgeon.

"Really, sir," said he, "this does seem rather too much of the monkey.

Here are no fewer than three persons in my list from bites of this infernal beast."

"Three!" I exclaimed, and straightway got angry, partly at my own folly, partly at the perversity of my pet, and also somewhat nettled by the tone not very unreasonably a.s.sumed by the doctor. "Send Black, the quarter-master, here directly." He soon came.

"Don't you take care of the monkey?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, I do. You gave me charge of him."

"Well! and why don't you prevent his biting the people?"

"I can't prevent him, sir."

"No! Then throw him overboard!" I cried--"over with him at once! There he stands, in charge of the corporal and two marines; pitch him right over the lee-gangway. I will not have the ship's company killed and wounded at this rate. Over with him, I say!"

The quarter-master moved off to the lee-gangway, and took the terrified animal in his arms; while, on its part, the poor creature seemed conscious of its approaching fate, and spread out its arms over the seaman's bare breast, as if to supplicate his mercy. The old sailor, who looked mightily as if he were going to melt upon the occasion, cast a pet.i.tioning glance to windward every now and then from under the edge of his straw hat, as I paced up and down the deck, still fuming away at the doctor's demi-official reproach. As I saw the fellow wished to say something, I at length asked him whether he had any proposal to make respecting his wicked and troublesome pet. The old man's face brightened up with this prospect of a respite for his favourite; and, after humming and hawing for a minute, he said,--

"It is all owing to these two great teeth, sir; if they were out, he would be as harmless as any lamb."

"I tell you what it is," I replied, catching at this suggestion, "I positively will not have the whole ship's company driven one after another into the sick list by your confounded monkey; but if you choose to draw those wild-boar tusks of his, you may let him live."

Few reprieves were ever hailed at the foot of the gallows with more joy by the friends of a felon than this announcement of a commutation of Mr. St. Jago's sentence was received by his affectionate companions. Even the marines, though const.i.tutionally predisposed against him, were glad of the change; and I heard the sentry at the cabin door say, "I knew the captain had too much regard for the animal to do him an injury."

Injury, indeed! I question whether poor Jacko thought the alternative any favour. At all events, his friends seemed grievously puzzled how to fulfil the conditions of his exemption from a watery grave; for I could perceive a council of war going on upon the lee side of the main deck, as to the best method of proceeding in the affair of the tusks.

"Who'll hold the monkey?" said one.

No answer was made to this. It was like the old story of belling the cat; but there was no Douglas so bold as to try the experiment on Master Jacko, who at any time was a powerful animal, and would, it was naturally inferred, make a tenfold effort when his teeth were the objects of attack.

"Even suppose we could tie the poor unfortunate victim," said the quarter-master, "who knows how to pull out these great big teeth? We might break his jaw in the operation."

There was a long pause.

"I dare say," at length cried one of the party, "that the doctor's mate, who is a good-natured gentleman, would be so kind as to tell us how we can manage this affair."

A deputation of the monkey's friends was accordingly despatched to present a humble pet.i.tion to the surgeon's a.s.sistant, praying that he would be graciously pleased to lend his professional aid in saving the jaw, and perhaps the life, of one of the most diverting vagabonds in his Majesty's service.

Fortunately, the a.s.sistant medico was not one of those priggish puppies who, having little professional knowledge to balance their own inherent stupidity, fancy it necessary to support their dignity by the agency of etiquettes alone. He was, on the contrary, a young man of skill, good sense, and right feelings, who cared nothing at all about his dignity when he could be of any use; or rather, who left it to take care of itself, without thinking of anything but his business. To tell the truth, he was so much a lover of his art that he felt secretly tickled with the idea of a new operation, and experienced on the occasion that peculiar pleasure, known, it is said, only to the faculty, when a complicated and difficult case falls into their hands.

He had just mixed a gla.s.s of grog, after the day's work was done, and was eyeing the beverage with that sort of serene antic.i.p.ation which the sober certainty of waking bliss is sure to produce, when the deputation made their appearance, having first sent in the boy, whose arm was still in a sling from the bite of the monkey.

"Are you in a hurry?" said the doctor, on hearing the novel pet.i.tion; for he had nestled himself into the corner of the berth, with one foot on the bench, the other on the table, and his gla.s.s of "half-and-half"

glowing like amber between his eye and the solitary glim of those profound regions, those diamond mines from which the Hoods and the Hardys of times past and times present have been drawn up to the very tip-top of their profession.

"Yes, sir," replied the spokesman of the party. "There is no time to be lost, for the captain, who is in a great rage, says, if we don't extricate the monkey's grinders, overboard he goes to a certainty."

"Extricate is not the word, you blockhead; extract, I suppose you mean. Besides, I fancy it is not his grinders which the captain has ordered to be removed, but his eye-teeth, or tusks, as they may fairly be called."

"Well, sir," said the impatient seaman, "just as you please, tushes or high teeth, if you'll only be kind enough to come and help us out of this plaguy mess, and save the poor dumb animal's life."

The quick clatter of feet up the ladders gave the signal that the successful deputation were returning to the anxious party a.s.sembled between the two guns just abaft the gangway-ladder, and nearly abreast the after-hatchway, and immediate preparations were made for the operation.

While these preparations were going on, the learned doctor had leisure to consider the case more attentively; and it occurred to him that it would be needless cruelty to draw the poor beast's tusks, and therefore he exchanged that too well-known instrument, the dentist's key, for a pair of bone-nippers, with which he proposed merely to break off the points.

"I don't know exactly about that," said the perplexed quarter-master, when the a.s.sistant surgeon explained his views of the matter. "The captain said to me, 'Draw those wild bear's tushes out of him;' and I am afraid, if they are only broken, the monkey may still have a chance for going astern."

"Nonsense, nonsense!" interrupted the judicious doctor. "Can you suppose the captain wished that anything should he done to the animal but just enough to prevent his biting the people?"

And, suiting the action to the word, he closed the fatal pincers, and nipped away the ends of the offending tusks, it is to be hoped without causing him any great pain. But although poor Jacko probably did not suffer much, his rage knew no bounds; and no sooner was the canvas unfolded, than he sprang towards the after-hatchway, and catching the sergeant's hand in his mouth, closed his jaws with all his force.

Instinctively the soldier's cane was in the air, but a dozen voices roared out, "He can't bite! He has got no tushes left! Don't hit him!"

And, sure enough, although Mr. St. Jago gnawed and struggled, he could make no impression on the well-tanned fist of the veteran, but, at length, slunk off quite abashed, amidst the shouts and laughter of the crew.

When the ship came to England, and was paid off, I turned over the monkey to the boatswain, who always remains in the ship, whence he found his way back to his old haunts in Exeter 'Change, after an absence of nearly three years; for happening one day, not long after the ship was paid off, to be in attendance upon a party seeing the wild beasts, one of the monkeys set up such a chattering in his cage, that he attracted the attention of the keeper of the establishment.

"That animal seems to know you, sir," said he to me; and upon going nearer, I discovered my old and mischievous friend grinning with delight. I must own, indeed, that my heart smote me a little as I looked at the broken teeth, while the poor fellow held out his paw to catch my hand, in the spirit of perfect kindness and forgiveness.

A far different fate, I am sorry to record, befell another monkey of mine, in another ship, and in a very different quarter of the globe. I was then in command of the Lyra, on the homeward voyage from China, after the emba.s.sy under Lord Amherst had been concluded. We touched on our way to Calcutta at the Philippine Islands, and, amongst other live stock, laid in a monkey which had seen the world. He was born, they a.s.sured us, at Teneriffe, bred at Cadiz, and had afterwards made the voyage across the Pacific Ocean, _via_ Lima and Acapulco, to Manilla.

Our extensive traveller had made good use of his time and opportunities, and was destined to see a good deal more of men and manners, indeed almost to make out the circuit of the globe. This distinguished monkey had a particular liking for the marines, who caressed and fed him, and sometimes even ventured to teach him to play off tricks on Jack, which the sailors promised one day to pay back with interest on the soldiers. In so diminutive a vessel as a ten-gun brig, there is but a small party of marines, merely a sergeant's guard, and no commissioned officer, otherwise I hardly think the following trick would have been attempted.

One Sunday, while going the formal division rounds, I came to a figure which at first sight puzzled me not a little. This was no other than our great traveller, the monkey, rigged out as a marine, and planted like a sentry on the middle step of the short ladder, which, in deep-waisted vessels, is placed at the gangway, and reaches from the deck to the top of the bulwark. The animal was dressed up in a complete suit of miniature uniform, made chiefly of the coloured buntin used for flags with sundry bits of red baize purloined from the carpenters. His regimental cap was constructed out of painted canvas; and under his lower jaw had been forced a stock of pump-leather, so stiff in itself, and so tightly drawn back, that his head was rendered totally immoveable. His chin, and great part of the cheeks, had been shaved with so much care, that only two small curled mustachios and a respectable pair of whiskers remained. His hair behind being tied back tightly into a queue, the poor devil's eyes were almost starting from his head; while the corners of his mouth being likewise tugged towards the ears by the hair-dresser's operations, the expression of his countenance became irresistibly ludicrous. The astonished recruit's elbows were then brought in contact and fastened behind by a lashing, pa.s.sed round and secured to the middle step of the ladder, so that he could not budge an inch from his position. One of the ship's pistols, fashioned like a musket, and strapped to his shoulder, was tied to his left hand, which again had been sewed by the sail-maker to the waistband of his beautifully pipe-clayed trousers; in short, he was rigged up as a complete sea-soldier in full uniform.

As the captain and his train approached, the monkey began to tremble and chatter; but the men, not knowing how their chief might relish the joke, looked rather grave, while, I own, it cost me no small official struggle to keep down a laugh. I did succeed, however, and merely said, in pa.s.sing, "You should not play these tricks upon travellers; cast him loose immediately." One of the men pulled his knife from his breast, and cutting the cord which fastened the poor Spaniard to the ladder, let him scamper off. Unluckily for the gravity of the officers, however, and that of the crew, Jacko did not run below, or jump into one of the boats out of sight, but made straight for his dear friends the marines, drawn up in line across our little hurricane-house of a p.o.o.p. Unconscious of the ridicule he was bringing on his military patrons, he took up a position in front of the corps, not unlike a fugleman; and I need hardly say, that even the royals themselves, provoked though they were, now joined in the laugh which soon pa.s.sed along the decks, and was with difficulty suppressed during the remainder of the muster.

A day or two afterwards, and while the monkey was still puzzled to think what was the matter with his chin, he happened to observe the doctor engaged in some chemical process. As his curiosity and desire for information were just such as ought to characterize a traveller of his intelligence, he crept gradually from chest to chest, and from bag to bag, till he arrived within about a yard of Apothecaries' Hall, as that part of the steerage was named by the midshipmen. Poor Mono's delight was very great as he observed the process of pill-making, which he watched attentively while the ingredients were successively weighed, pounded, and formed into a long roll of paste. All these proceedings excited his deepest interest. The doctor then took his spreader, and cut the roll into five pieces, each of which he intended to divide into a dozen pills. At this stage of the process, some one called the pharmacopoeist's attention to the hatchway. The instant his back was turned, the monkey darted on the top of the medicine-chest, snapped up all the five ma.s.ses of pill stuff, stowed them hastily away in his pouch, or bag, at the side of his mouth, scampered on deck, and leaped into the main rigging, preparatory to a leisurely feast upon his pilfered treasures.

The doctor's first feeling was that of anger at the abstraction of his medicines; but in the next instant, recollecting that unless immediate steps were taken, the poor animal must inevitably be poisoned, he rushed on deck, without coat or hat, and knife in hand, to the great surprise and scandal of the officer of the watch.

"Lay hold of the monkey, some of you!" roared the doctor to the people. "Jump up in the rigging, and try to get out of his pouch a whole mess of my stuff he has run off with!"

The men only laughed, as they fancied the doctor must be cracked.

"For any sake," cried the good-natured physician, "don't make a joke of this matter. The monkey has now in his jaws more than a hundred grains of calomel, and unless you get it from him, he will die to a certainty!"

Literally, the quant.i.ty Jacko had purloined, had it been prescribed, would have been ordered in these terms:--

Rx Hydrargyri submuriatis, 3ij. (Take of calomel 120 grains!)

This appeal, which was quite intelligible, caused an immediate rush of the men aloft; but the monkey, after gulping down one of the lumps, or twenty-four grains, shot upwards to the top, over the rail of which he displayed his shaven countenance, and, as if in scorn of their impotent efforts to catch him, plucked another lump from his cheek, and swallowed it likewise, making four dozen grains to begin with. The news spread over the ship; and all hands, marines inclusive, most of whom had never been farther in the rigging than was necessary to hang up a wet shirt to dry, were seen struggling aloft to rescue the poor monkey from his sad fate. All their exertions were fruitless; for just as the captain of the maintop seized him by the tail, at the starboard royal yard-arm, he was cramming the last batch of calomel down his throat!

It would give needless pain to describe the effects of swallowing the whole of this enormous prescription. Every art was resorted to within our reach in the shape of antidotes, but all in vain. The stomach-pump was then, unfortunately, not invented. Poor Jacko's sufferings, of course, were great: first, he lost the use of his limbs, then he became blind, next paralytic; and, in short, he presented, at the end of the week, such a dreadful spectacle of pain, distortion, and rigidity of limb, that I felt absolutely obliged to desire that he might be released from his misery, by being thrown into the sea. This was accordingly done when the ship was going along, for the British Channel, at the rate of seven or eight knots, with a fine fair wind.