fast. There he stood staring aloft as though fascinated or electrified, then putting his foot over the top he got into the fore-shrouds, and trotted down on deck, all very quick. The captain stood near the main hatch, looking up. The mate approached him, and, in a whisper of awe and terror, exclaimed, whilst his eyes sought the shadow up in the foretopmast cross-trees, 'I believe the Dutchman's right, sir, and that we've been boarded by the devil himself.'

"'What are you talking about?'

"'I never saw the like of such a thing,' said the mate, in shaking tones.

"'Is it a man?' said the captain, staring up with amazement, while the seamen came hustling close in a sneaking way to listen, and the Dutchman drew close to the mate.

"'It has the looks of a man,' said the mate; 'yet it sha'n't be murder if you kill him.'

"'She vos no man, sir. I vos close. I vent closer don you. I oxpect, sir,' said the Dutchman, 'she's an imp. Strange dot I did not see him till I was upon her.'

"The captain went swiftly to his cabin for a binocular glass. The lenses helped him to determine the motionless shadow in the cross-trees, and he clearly distinguished an apparently large human shape, but in what fashion, or 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 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 Zoölogical 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.

"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