avage people, and they lived by hunting with their spears, and
bows and arrows. They hunted wild animals--lions, tigers, elephants and
monkeys. Some of the wild animals they used for food, and others they
sold to white men who wanted them for circuses and menageries. And
monkeys were generally the easiest to catch.

Some of these black, half-clothed, savage natives had spread a vine net
in the forest. The net, being made of vines, could not be seen until
some animal got close to it. And to make monkeys come close to the net,
so it would fall down over them, when one end was pulled loose by a
native (hidden behind a tree) bits of cocoanut were sprinkled about.
Monkeys are very fond of cocoanut, and the natives knew, when the little
long-tailed creatures went to pick up the white pieces, that they would
come nearer and nearer to the trap-net, until they were caught. That was
what had happened to Mappo.

The little monkey tried and tried again to break out of the net, but he
could not. It was too strong. Tighter and tighter it was pulled about
him, until he could struggle no more. He lay there, a sad little lump of
monkey in the net.

Then some black men, with long sharp sticks, or spears, gathered about
him, and talked very fast and loud. You would not have understood what
they said, if you had heard them, any more than you can understand dog
and cat talk, but Mappo knew some of what they were saying, for he had
lived in the jungle all his life, and these were natives, or jungle men.

"Ha! We caught only one monkey!" exclaimed one tall, black man, with a
long spear.

"Well, but he is a good one," another man said. "We will take him to the
coast in a box, and sell him to the white men who will take him away in
a ship. We will get many things for him, lots of beads to put around our
necks, some brass wire to make rings for our noses and ankles, and red
cloth to wear."

The natives, you see, did not want money. They wanted beads and bits of
shiny brass wire, or gay-colored cloth, to make themselves look, as they
thought, very fine. They even put rings in their noses, as well as in
their ears, to decorate themselves.

"Ha! So this is not the end of me!" thought Mappo, when he heard the
black men thus talking. "I am to be put in a box, and taken to a ship,
it seems. I wonder what a ship is like. Well, as long as I am not to be
hurt, perhaps it will be fun after all. But I wish they would let my
mamma and papa, and sist