able to push back the brutes, whenever they approached near
enough to seize hold of our skeleton barricade.

Fortunately the doorway sloped out from the chamber--after the manner of
an embrasure in a fortress--and on this account the bodies were wedged
tightly against the cheeks on both sides; so that although it would have
been easy to remove them from the inside, it would have required a
strong pull to have drawn them outward. So long, therefore, as we could
prevent the mandrills from tearing them to pieces, we should be safe
enough.

For more than an hour we were kept at constant work, shoving our weapons
backward and forward like a pair of sawyers. At length, however, the
assaults of the enemy outside, became feebler, and more desultory. They
began to perceive that they could not effect an entrance, and as most of
them had by this time received a good punch in the head, or between the
ribs, they were not so eager to try it again.

But, although they at length desisted from their attempts to break in
upon us, we could still hear them as before. We could no longer see
them--for the fire had gone out, and all was darkness, both outside and
within.

Not a ray of light reached us from any quarter; and we passed the night
in the midst of perfect darkness and gloom.

But not in silence: all night long the troop kept up its chorus of
screams, and howlings and wailings; and although we listened attentively
in the hopes that we might hear some signs of departure, our ears were
not gratified by any such sounds.

It was certainly one of the most unpleasant nights that either my
companion or I had ever passed. I need not say that neither of us
slept, we had not a wink of sleep throughout the live-long night; nor
would it have been possible for Morpheus himself to have slept under the
circumstances. We had heard of the implacable disposition which not
only the mandrills, but other baboon-monkeys exhibit when they have been
assailed by an enemy; we had heard that their resentment once kindled,
cannot be again allayed until the object of it either becomes their
victim, or else escapes altogether beyond their reach. With the monkey
tribe it is not as with lions, buffaloes, rhinoceroses, or other
dangerous beasts that maybe encountered in the forests of Africa. When
the enemy is out of sight, all these animals seem to forget the assault
that may have been made upon them, or, at all events, soon give over
their hostile