"The second mate, that he might make sure of his aim, went aloft into
the foretop. The beast was then sitting on the topgallant yard. He had
been in command of the fabric of the fore all day. Had it come on to
blow so as to oblige the captain to shorten sail, the deuce a seaman
durst have gone aloft to stow the canvas. The second mate, standing in
the top, was in the act of lifting his rifle, when the monster,
running on all fours out to the dizzy topgallant yard-arm, stood erect
a breathless instant, poised--in human posture--a marvellous picture
of the man-beast against the liquid blue, then sprang into the air.

"'Come down,' roared the captain to the second mate, 'and shoot him
through the head, for God's sake!'

"As the beast rose with a wild grin after having been so long out of
sight through the frightful height he had jumped from, you'd have
thought he'd have risen with a burst skin, the captain bawled out,
'Blessed if he's not making for his raft.'

"The baboon, with a fixed expression, and with eyes askew upon the
ship as he drove past, swimming very finely with long easy flourishes
of his arms and dexterous thrusts of his legs, whilst the end of his
tail stood up astern of him as though it was some comical little man
there steering,--the baboon, I say, was undoubtedly and with amazing
sagacity making straight for the raft, having taken its bearings when
aloft; but at the moment the second mate knelt to level his piece,
meaning to murder the poor brute out of pure mercy, the thing uttered,
oh, my God! what a horrible cry! and vanished, and a quantity of blood
rose and dyed a bright patch upon the calm blue. No more was seen of
the baboon, but a little later the black scythe-like fins of three
sharks showed in the spot where he had disappeared."

_Plums from a Sailor's Duff._

It has been commonly expected of sailors in all ages that they should
encounter nothing upon the ocean but hair-breadth escapes. The theory
is that the mariner but half discharges his duties when his
experiences are limited to his work as a seaman. That he may be fully
and perfectly accomplished vocationally he must know what it is to
have been cast away, to have barely come off with his life out of a
ship on fire, to have been overboard on many occasions in heavy seas,
to have chewed pieces of lead in open boats to assuage his thirst--to
have encountered, in short, most of the stock horrors of the oceani