whether or not habited, it was
impossible to see. How had he come into the ship? The captain went on
to the poop and searched the silent sea with the glass with some fancy
of finding a boat within reach of his vision. Nothing was to be seen
but the glass-smooth face of the deep, with here and there the light
of a large trembling star draining into it. The catspaw had died out,
and it mattered nothing whether they braced the fore-yards round or
not.

"It got wind in the forecastle that something wild, unearthly,
hellish, was aloft, and the watch below turned out, too restless to
sleep, and all through those hours of darkness the sailors walked the
decks in groups, again and again staring up at the foretopmast
cross-trees, where the mysterious bulk of blackness sate, squatted, or
hung motionless, like some brooding fiend, or incarnation of ill-luck,
sinking by force of meditation its curses not loud, but deep, into the
bottom of the very hold itself.

"'Why don't the captain let me shoot him?' said the second mate at
four o'clock. 'I cannot miss that mark; my rifle will bring him to
your feet at the cost of a single shot.'

"'No,' said the chief mate, 'I've talked of trying what shooting will
do. The captain means to wait for sunlight. But how did it get on
board?' said he, sinking his voice in awe. 'There's no land for
hundreds of leagues. Is it some sort of human sea-monster, some merman
whose looks blind you with their ugliness, which this ship's been
doomed to discover, and perhaps carry home?'

"It was not long before day whitened the east. In those climates the
morning is a quick revelation, and hardly had the dawn broke when sea
and sky were lighted up. And then, and even then, what was it? There
it sat up in the cross-trees, a hairy, sulky bulk of man or beast,
black, and the creature looked hard down whilst all hands were staring
hard up.

"Seized if it isn't a gorilla!" said the mate.

"'No.' said the captain, letting fall his binocular, 'look for
yourself. Yet, it's not a man, either.' He burst into a laugh as
though for relief. 'It's a huge, hairy baboon, one of the biggest I
ever saw in my life. He'll be as fierce as a mutinous crew, and strong
as a frigate's complement. What's to be done with him?'

"'How in Egypt did he come on board?' said the mate, viewing the beast
through the glass.

"'By that, maybe, sir,' exclaimed the second mate, pointing to some
object floating flat and yellow, faint and