ft perfumed air, which seemed to me like a breath from the portals of
Paradise!

Leaning against one of the trees, a fine juniper it was, I had just
taken off my cap to wipe the perspiration that was rolling down my face
like rain, it having been a stiff climb upwards from the undulating
country below, besides having to battle, too, with the brushwood most of
the way, and the creepers that hung down from the branches, making some
of the places through which we passed perfect jungles of massed
vegetation, when, all of a sudden, a big hairy hand clutched me round
the throat and I felt myself drawn up into the tree.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

A REGULAR SCRIMMAGE!

I believe the delicious perfume that permeated the air had almost lulled
me to sleep for the moment, when I was rudely roused up by feeling the
grip on my throat. "Belay that, Larry," cried I, fancying that my
practical-joking friend had stolen a march on me, thinking to catch me
napping, speaking without even taking the trouble to open my eyes. "A
lark's a lark, old chap: but you needn't squeeze my throat so beastly
hard, Larry!"

The pressure of his fingers, as I thought, continuing and absolutely
causing me considerable pain, as well as throttling me, while I felt
myself drawn up, as I have stated, into the lower branches of the tree
against which I had been leaning, I quickly opened my eyes.

Heavens, I was horrified!

The hand that I fancied was the hand of Larry and which he had clasped
round my neck in joke, was one of the great hairy paws of a huge baboon,
who, with his grinning face shoved close to mine, was trying his best to
choke me in grim earnest; while, getting a purchase with the other paw
on to a projecting limb of the juniper-tree, he was slowly hoisting me
aloft.

His grip was so strong that I felt powerless in his grasp; but, all the
same, I was not going to give in to a brute of a monkey without making a
fight for it!

So, feeling for the lanyard of my knife, I drew this out of its sheath
and gave Jocko's elder brother a slash across his wrist that must have
tickled him up a bit, the blood from the beast's paw shooting over my
face in a stream, while he let go his hold of me.

Hardly had I reached the ground, however, touching mother earth again
with a jerk that nearly dislocated my ankles, besides making me fall
sideways all a-sprawl, than the baboon, giving vent to a vicious snarl,
caught hold of my left leg with both his pa