far out upon the starboard
quarter.

"The captain levelled the ship's telescope. 'A large raft!' he
exclaimed, after some minutes of silent examination. 'Take a boat and
examine it.'

"A quarter-boat was lowered, and the second mate and four men pulled
away for the raft in the distance. It was a very large raft,
manifestly launched by some country wallah in the last throes: a
complicate huge grating, or floating platform, of immensely thick
bamboos and spare spars, secured by turns of Manilla or coir rope. It
was clean swept; not a rag was to be seen. Whether the sufferers had
been taken off, leaving the baboon behind them, whether they had died,
and the wash of the ocean had slipped their bodies overboard, the
baboon holding on to the raft, who was to tell? 'At sea,' said Lord
Nelson, 'nothing is impossible and nothing improbable.'

"The raft had floated to the bows of the ship in the silent midnight,
and the baboon sprang aboard and aloft.

"The creature on high was a clear picture in the bright sunshine. It
made many dreadful grimaces, by the exhibition of its teeth, and when
the boat drew alongside it moved and stood up, and showed a great
tail, then hung with one fist, looking down. It next descended with
the velocity of wind into the foretop.

"The captain said: 'The beast don't seem faint, but I guess he's
thirsty, and he may fall mad, come down, and bite some of us. So,'
says he to the chief officer, 'send a hand aloft with a bucket of
fresh water for the poor brute and a pocketful of ship's bread. If we
can civilise him, so much the better.'

"But it never came to it," said the grey-haired respectable seaman.
"The creature fled to the cross-trees nimble as light when he saw a
couple of seamen mounting to the top, then descended, and ate and
drank ravenously when they had come down, which feeding murdered him,
and ruined the captain's hopes of carrying the fellow to London and
selling him at a large price to the Zooelogical Gardens. For he refused
to come on deck. He bared his teeth, and his eyes shone with the
malice of hell if the men attempted to approach him. It was impossible
to let him rest aloft throughout the night to command the ship, so to
speak; for he might sink to the deck stealthy as the shadow of a cloud
blown by the wind, and he was strong enough and big enough to tear a
sleeping man's throat out.

"'He must be shot,' said the captain, and he told the second mate to
fetch his rifle.