I looked; the fellow I had been watching had disappeared! I rushed to the side and saw poor Old Jacob skimming along astern! He had his spectacles and his cap on, and he was swimming like a man, striking out with vigour. He swept to the height of a sea, and his poor white-whiskered face most tragically comical with its spectacles stood out clear as a cameo for a breath, ere it vanished in the hollow. It then disappeared for good.
I glanced forward again and perceived the man whom I thought had fallen into the sea climbing out of the forechains to the part of the rigging where he had been at work.
The mate, coming forward, cried, “Who was it that sang out _man overboard_?”
The fellow dropped on to the deck and approached the officer.
“What do you mean,” cried the mate in a passion, “by raising over a monkey such an alarm as _man overboard_?”
“I thought it was a man, sir,” answered the sailor. “I had caught sight of him on the jibboom, and believed it was Bill Heenan.”
“What!” shouted the mate, “with those spectacles on?”
“I didn’t notice the spectacles, sir,” said the man; “I see a figure out on the jibboom, and whilst I was looking the jib-sheet chucked him overboard, and that’s why I sung out.”
The mate stared hard at the man, but seemed to think he was telling the truth, on which he told him to go forward and get on with his work, biting his underlip to conceal an expression of laughter, as he walked towards the wheel.
That evening, in the second dog-watch, there was a fight between the sailor, whose name was Jim Honeyball, and Bill Heenan. Bill had heard that Jim had mistaken him for Old Jacob, and had told the mate so; and thereupon challenged him to stand up like a man. There was a deal of pummeling, much rolling about, encouraging cheers from the sailors, and “language,” as it is called, on the part of the combatants; but neither was much hurt.
Such was the end of the poor monkey; yet he seemed to have found a successor in Bill Heenan, for, to the end of the voyage, the Irishman was always called Old Jacob.
We were talking in the midshipmen’s berth over the loss of the monkey, when Poole, the long midshipman, who was in my watch, spun us the following yarn:—“I made my first voyage,” said he, “in a ship called the _Sweepstakes_, to Madras, Calcutta, and Hong Kong. On our way home we brought up off Singapore for a day on some business of cargo, of which I forget the nature. I was standing at the gangway, my duty as midshipman being to keep the ship’s side clear of loafers, when I saw a large boat heading for us. She was like one of those surf-boats you see at Madras. There were five fellows rowing her, and one chap steered with a long oar. They were all darkies, naked to the waist. I was struck by the manner in which one of them, as the boat approached, looked over the shoulder at our ship. The others kept their eyes on their oars or gazed over the stern; but this chap stared continuously behind him as the boat advanced; by which I mean that he looked ahead, for of course a fellow rows with his back upon the bow of a boat. They came alongside, and I found that the men had a great number of monkeys to sell. I looked hard at the fellow whose chin had been upon his shoulder as he rowed, and was wondering what on earth sort of native he was, when, on a sudden, I caught sight of his tail! He was a huge ape, of the size of a man—at all events, of the size of his shipmates. He so much resembled the others at a little distance that there was nothing wonderful in my not having distinguished him quickly. He had pulled his oar with fine precision, keeping time like one of the University Eight, and there had been nothing odd about him at all, saving his manner of looking over his shoulder. The others held up monkeys to show us, and, I tell you, I burst into a roar of laughter when I saw this great ape pick up a bit of a marmozette and flourish it up at me as if he would have me buy. In a very little while the ship was full of monkeys. Almost every man amongst us bought one. I chose a pretty little creature that slept in the clews of my hammock all the way home; but he grew so tall and quarrelsome that my mother, when I was absent last year, gave him away to an old gentleman, who shortly afterwards, in the most mysterious manner, disappeared, together with the monkey.”