m loose immediately." One of the men pulled his knife from his
breast, and cutting the cord which fastened the poor Spaniard to the
ladder, let him scamper off. Unluckily for the gravity of the
officers, however, and that of the crew, Jacko did not run below, or
jump into one of the boats out of sight, but made straight for his
dear friends the marines, drawn up in line across our little
hurricane-house of a poop. Unconscious of the ridicule he was bringing
on his military patrons, he took up a position in front of the corps,
not unlike a fugleman; and I need hardly say, that even the royals
themselves, provoked though they were, now joined in the laugh which
soon passed along the decks, and was with difficulty suppressed during
the remainder of the muster.

A day or two afterwards, and while the monkey was still puzzled to
think what was the matter with his chin, he happened to observe the
doctor engaged in some chemical process. As his curiosity and desire
for information were just such as ought to characterize a traveller of
his intelligence, he crept gradually from chest to chest, and from bag
to bag, till he arrived within about a yard of Apothecaries' Hall, as
that part of the steerage was named by the midshipmen. Poor Mono's
delight was very great as he observed the process of pill-making,
which he watched attentively while the ingredients were successively
weighed, pounded, and formed into a long roll of paste. All these
proceedings excited his deepest interest. The doctor then took his
spreader, and cut the roll into five pieces, each of which he intended
to divide into a dozen pills. At this stage of the process, some one
called the pharmacopoeist's attention to the hatchway. The instant his
back was turned, the monkey darted on the top of the medicine-chest,
snapped up all the five masses of pill stuff, stowed them hastily
away in his pouch, or bag, at the side of his mouth, scampered on
deck, and leaped into the main rigging, preparatory to a leisurely
feast upon his pilfered treasures.

The doctor's first feeling was that of anger at the abstraction of his
medicines; but in the next instant, recollecting that unless immediate
steps were taken, the poor animal must inevitably be poisoned, he
rushed on deck, without coat or hat, and knife in hand, to the great
surprise and scandal of the officer of the watch.

"Lay hold of the monkey, some of you!" roared the doctor to the
people. "Jump up in the rigging,