.

"Hurry! Hurry!" begged the man on the mast of the lighter. "One big
gray-bearded monkey is getting ready to shin up after me, and there's a
twenty-foot snake wiggling this way from the after hatch. Hurry!"

Andy paused in the operation of lowering the boat.

"Say, we're going to be up against it ourselves if we board that
lighter," he said to Frank.

"I know it, but I don't intend to board her until I get those creatures
out of our way."

"But how you going to do it?" his brother wanted to know.

"I'll make some plan after we row over and talk to the man. It's queer
how he happened to have such a cargo, and how they got loose. Lower
away."

The little craft took the water easily and was soon riding under the
stern of the _Gull_. Frank and Andy slid down the rope falls, after
tossing two pairs of oars into the boat, and unhooked the blocks,
leaving them dangling to be used on their return to hoist the boat up
to the davits again.

"We're coming!" yelled Frank, in answer to another frantic appeal for
aid. "How many of them are there?"

"About a million snakes and ten thousand monkeys!" was the frightened
reply. "Come on! I can't hang here much longer."

"Where did they come from?" demanded Andy, when he and his brother were
near the side of the lighter.

"I got a job of transfering them from a ship that's just in from South
America, to a dock up near Seabright way," answered the man.

"How'd they get loose?" Frank wanted to know.

"Hanged if I know," was the reply. "I was sailing along easy like,
when all of a sudden I felt something on my leg. It was sort of
squeezin' me, and when I looked down I saw a big snake crawling up. I
gave one yell and scudded across the deck. Then I saw a monkey making
faces at me from the hatchway. The long tailed beasts must have broken
out of their cages, and then the monkeys let the snakes loose. I
climbed up here, and here I am."

"Are they savage?" asked Andy.

"Say, for the love of lobsters don't ask so many questions!" begged the
man. "Get aboard here and drive the critters away so I can come down.
One of the monkeys cast off the main sheet and spilled the wind out of
the sail."

"It's a good thing he did, or we couldn't have come up to you," called
Frank. "We'll see what we can do. Where are the cages?"

"Down in the hold. The steamer captain, when I took the beasts, told
me to keep 'em below, and I did, but I didn't think they'd get loose so