nce, the women were
alarmed by the sight of a tremendous ourang-outang issuing from our
house, which they had just left. They seemed to have been struck dumb
and senseless with amazement, for not one of them uttered a sound, until
the monster, springing forward, in one moment, snatched up the child and
made off with him. Before I reached the green where the cows stood, the
ourang-outang was fully half a mile gone, and only the poor, feeble
exhausted women running screaming after him. Before I overtook the
women, I heard the agonized cries of my dear boy, my darling William, in
the paws of that horrible monster. I pursued, breathless and altogether
unnerved with agony; but, alas! I rather lost than gained ground.

These animals have this peculiarity, that when they are walking
leisurely or running down-hill, they walk upright like a human being;
but when hard pressed on level ground, or up hill, they use their long
arms as fore-legs, and then run with inconceivable swiftness. When
flying with their own young, the greater part of them will run nearly
twice as fast as an ordinary man, for the cubs cling to them with both
feet and hands, but as my poor William shrunk from the monster's touch,
he was obliged to embrace him closely with one paw, and run on three,
and still in that manner he outran me. Keeping still his distance before
me, he reached the Keys river, and there the last gleam of hope closed
on me, for I could not swim while the ourang-outang, with much
acuteness, threw the child across his shoulders, held him by the feet
with one paw, and with the other three stemmed the river, though then in
flood, with amazing rapidity. It was at this dreadful moment that my
beloved babe got his eyes on me as I ran across the plain towards him,
and I saw him holding up his little hands in the midst of the foaming
flood, and crying out, "Pa! pa! pa!" which he seemed to utter with a
sort of desperate joy at seeing me approach.

Alas, that sight was the last, for in two minutes thereafter the monster
vanished, with my dear child, in the jungles and woods beyond the river,
and then my course was stayed, for to have thrown myself in, would only
have been committing suicide, and leaving a destitute widow in a foreign
land. I was quickly aroused by the sight of twelve of my countrymen
coming full speed across the plain on my track. They were all armed and
stripped for the pursuit, and four of them, some of whom you know, Adam
Johnst