no; not as a rule. Of course you know Idon't like your snakes to get gliding all over the ship, as they werethe other day. But, doctor, what's the good of my objecting? If anyone were to let that awful beast in the box yonder loose--"
"Don't think of it, captain," I interrupted; "he'd be the death ofsomebody, to a dead certainty."
"No; I'm not such a fool," he continued. "But if I shot him, why, in afew days you'd be billeting a boar-constrictor or an alligator on me,and telling me it was for the good of science and the service."
The awful beast in the box was the most splendid and graceful specimenof the monitor lizard I have ever seen. Fully five feet long from tipto tail, he swelled and tapered in the most perfect lines of beauty.Smooth, though scaly, and inky black, tartaned all over with transverserows of bright yellow spots, with eyes that shone like wildfire, andteeth like quartz, with his forked tongue continually flashing out fromhis bright-red mouth, he had a wild, weird loveliness that was mostuncanny. Mephistopheles, as the captain not inaptly called him, knewme, however, and took his cockroaches from my hand, although perfectlyfrantic when any one else went near him. If a piece of wood, howeverhard, were dropped into his cage, it was instantly torn in pieces; andif he seized the end of a rope, he might quit partnership with his heador teeth, but never with the rope.
One day, greatly to my horror, the steward entered the wardroom, palewith fear, and reported: "Mephistopheles escaped, sir, and yaffling[rending] the men." I rushed on deck. The animal had indeed escaped.He had torn his cage into splinters, and declared war against all hands.Making for the fore hatchway, he had seized a man by the jacket skirts,going down the ladder. The man got out of the garment without delay,and fled faster than any British sailor ought to have done. On thelower deck he chased the cook from the coppers, and the carpenter fromhis bench. A circle of Kroomen were sitting mending a foresail;Mephistopheles suddenly appeared in their midst. The niggersunanimously threw up their toes, individually turned somersaultsbackwards, and sought the four winds of heaven. These routed, my petturned his attention to Peepie. Peepie was a little Arab slave-lass.She was squatting by a calabash, singing low to herself, and eatingrice. He seized her cummerbund, or waist garment. But Peepie wriggledclear--natural--and ran on deck, the innocent, like the "funny littlemaiden" in Hans Breitmann. On the cummerbund Mephistopheles spent theremainder of his fury, and the rest of his life; for not knowing whatmight happen next, I sent for a fowling-piece, and the plucky fellowsuccumbed to the force of circumstances and a pipeful of buck-shot. Ihave him yonder on the sideboard, in body and in spirit (gin),bottle-mates with a sandsnake, three centipedes, and a tarantula.
With monkeys, baboons, apes, and all of that ilk, navy ships, whenhomeward bound, are ofttimes crowded. Of our little crew of seventy, Ithink nearly every man had one, and some two, such pets, although fullyone-half died of chest-disease as soon as the ship came into colderlatitudes. These monkeys made the little craft very lively indeed, andwere a never-ending source of amusement and merriment to all hands. Idon't like monkeys, however. They "are so near, and yet so far," asrespects humanity. I went shooting them once--a cruel sport, and morecowardly even than elephant-hunting in Ceylon--and when I broke thewrist of one, instead of hobbling off, as it ought to have done, it camehowling piteously towards me, shaking and showing me the bleeding limb.The little wretch preached me a sermon anent cruelty to animals that Ishall not forget till the day I die.
We had a sweet-faced, delicate, wee marmoset, not taller, when on end,than a quart bottle--Bobie the sailors called him; and we had also alarger ape, Hunks by name, of what our Scotch engineer called the"ill-gettit breed"; and that was a mild way of putting it. This brutewas never out of mischief. He stole the men's tobacco, smashed theirpipes, spilled their soup, and ran aloft with their caps, which heminutely inspected and threw overboard afterwards. He was always on theblack list; in fact, when rubbing his back after one thrashing, he waswondering all the time what mischief he could do next. Bobie wasarrayed in a neatly fitting sailor-costume, cap and all complete; and soattired, of course could not escape the persecutions of the ape. Hunks,after contenting himself with cockroaches, would fill his mouth; thenholding out his hand with one to Bobie, "Hae, hae, hae," he would cry,then seize the little innocent, and escape into the rigging with him.Taking his seat in the maintop, Hunks first and foremost emptied hismouth, cramming the contents down his captive's throat. He next got outon to the stays for exercise, and used Bobie as a species of dumb-bell,swinging him by the tail, hanging him by a foot, by an ear, by the nose,etc, and threatening to throw him overboard if any sailor attempted arescue. Last of all, he threw him at the nearest sailor.
On board the _Orestes_ was a large ape as big as a man. He was a mostunhappy ape. There wasn't a bit of humour in his whole corporation."He had a silent sorrow" somewhere, "a grief he'd ne'er impart."Whenever you spoke to him, he seized and wrung your hand in the mostpathetic manner, and drew you towards him. His other arm was thrownacross his chest, while he shook his head, and gazed in your face withsuch a woe-begone countenance, that the very smile froze on your lips;and as you couldn't laugh out of politeness, you felt very awkward. Foranything I know, this melancholy ape may be still alive.
Deer are common pets in some ships. We had a fine large buck in the old_Semiramie_. A romping, rollicking rascal, in truth a very satyr, whonever wanted a quid of tobacco in his mouth, nor refused rum and milk.Whenever the steward came up to announce dinner, he bolted below atonce; and we were generally down just in time to find him dancing amongthe dishes, after eating all the potatoes.
I once went into my cabin and found two Liliputian deer in my bed. Itwas our engineer who had placed them there. We were lying off Lamoo,and he had brought them from shore.
"Ye'll just be a faither to the lammies, doctor," he said, "for I'm noon vera guid terms wi' the skipper."
They were exactly the size of an Italian greyhound, perfectly formed,and exceedingly graceful. They were too tender, poor things, for lifeon shipboard, and did not live long.
In the stormy latitudes of the Cape, the sailors used to amusethemselves by catching Cape pigeons, thus: a little bit of wood floatedastern attached by a string, a few pieces of fat thrown into the water,and the birds, flying tack and half-tack towards them, came athwart theline, by a dexterous movement of which they entangled their wings, andlanded them on board. They caught albatrosses in the same fashion, andnothing untoward occurred.
I had for many months a gentle, loving pet in the shape of a snow-whitedove. I had bought him that I might make feather-flowers from hisplumage; but the boy brought him off alive, and I never had the heart tokill him. So he lived in a leathern hat-box, and daily took his perchon my shoulder at meal-times [see page 178].
It was my lot once upon a time to be down with fever in India. The roomin which I lay was the upper flat of an antiquated building, in a ratherlonely part of the suburbs of a town. It had three windows, close towhich grew a large banyan-tree, beneath the shade of whose branches thecrew of a line-of-battle ship might have hung their hammocks withcomfort. The tree was inhabited by a colony of crows; we stood--thecrows and I--in the relation of over-the-way to each other. Now, of allbirds that fly, the Indian crow most bear the palm for audacity. Livingby his wits, he is ever on the best of terms with himself, and hisimpudence leads him to dare anything. Whenever, by any chance, Pandoo,my attendant, left the room, these black gentry paid me a visit.Hopping in by the score, and regarding me no more than the bed-post,they commenced a minute inspection of everything in the room, trying todestroy everything that could not be eaten or carried away. They rentthe towels, drilled holes in my uniform, stole the buttons from my coat,and smashed my bottles. One used to sit on a screen close by my bedevery day, and scan my face with his evil eye, saying as plainly ascould be--"You're getting thinner and beautifully less; in a day or two,you won't be able to lift a hand; then I'll have the pleasure of pickingout your two eyes."
&nbs
p; Amid such doings, my servant would generally come to my relief, perhapsto find such a scene as this: Two or three pairs of hostile crows withtheir feathers standing up around their necks, engaged in deadly combaton the floor over a silver spoon or a tooth-brush; half a dozen perchedupon every available chair; an unfortunate lizard with a crow at eachend of it, getting whirled wildly round the room, each crow thinking hehad the best right to it; crows everywhere, hopping about on the table,and drinking from the bath; crows perched on the window-sill, and morecrows about to come, and each crow doing all in his power to make thegreatest possible noise. The faithful Pandoo would take all this in ata glance; then would ensue a helter-skelter retreat, and the windows bedarkened by the black wings of the flying crows, then silence for
Aileen Aroon, A Memoir Page 27
