he bow of one of
the life-boats. Possibly these letters are part of "Livorni," the
Italian word for Leghorn, and the list of recent sailings from that
port is now being scrutinised with some anxiety.'

[Illustration: THE MONKEY'S RESCUE]

Now what interested Donald--'Big Donald,' he was always called--in this
story was not the monkey, but the arrival of the _Mermaid_. For the
Captain was a friend of his, and was bringing him some tools from home
in this very ship. Though 'Big Donald' was now a gold-miner, he came out
from Scotland when quite a lad. His father was a small farmer in Skye,
and, dying early, the family emigrated to America. As it was to get
these tools that Donald came in to San Francisco he soon found his way
to the harbour, and, finding out the _Mermaid_, walked on board. No one
was visible on deck, so Donald sat down on a coil of rope to wait. He
had not been there three minutes when a matted head and two very
brilliant eyes suddenly shot up the companion, and a full-grown monkey
sprang in front of him and stared into his face. Donald, much startled
by this apparition, called out in a loud voice for the creature to go
away; but the moment the words were spoken the monkey sprang on his back
and clasped its long hairy arms about his neck. The miner shook it off
in terror and tried to run ashore, but the monkey followed, frisking and
gambolling round him, and chasing him all over the quay. Donald soon
discovered, however, that the monkey meant no harm, and a few days later
an explanation of this sudden outburst of interest in a stranger--the
Captain told Donald that the monkey had never been known to behave like
this before--broke in upon the miner's mind. He remembered that when he
suddenly spoke to the monkey he had called to it _in Gaelic_. Under the
impulse of a sudden fear, I suppose, the language of his boyhood had
started to his lips, and the words came out unconsciously '_Imich air
falbh_,' which means 'Go away.' What made Donald remember the
circumstance was this, that whenever afterwards he used the Highland
tongue the monkey manifested peculiar signs of joy. The only way the
miner could account for this singular fact was to suppose that somehow
or other this monkey had once belonged to some one who used the Gaelic
language--a suggestion, however, which people generally laughed at. The
miner always maintained, nevertheless, that the monkey really knew
Gaelic, and he seldom spoke to it