Tom Finchs Monkey, and how he dined with the Admiral | Page 3

Tom often kicking him out of his cabin, where he would take possession of his sofa whenever he had the chance, wrapping himself in Tom's boat-cloak and reclining gracefully on the cushions. One of Jocko's chief amusements also was in watching the machinery when in motion; and he would spend hours in looking down at it through the engine-room hatch.
Once, when the skylight was up, he had a narrow squeak for his life; for, carried away by his excitement, in trying to put his hands--paws I should say--on the revolving shaft, he tumbled through; and, but for the chief engineer seeing him in time and stopping the engines, which were just then going slow, poor Jocko would have come to grief.
This accident, however, never broke him of the habit of inspecting the machinery. It had a sort of weird attraction for him which he could not resist. Possibly, he might have been a sort of incubating Watt or Brunel, who knows? But, alas, he never became sufficiently developed or "evolved" from his quadrumanous condition to answer the question in person, as the engines which were his hobby in the end compassed his untimely death!
Those paddle-wheel steamers that were built for the navy some forty years ago, although designed for capturing Cuban slavers, were certainly not remarkable for their speed, and the Porpoise was no exception to her class; so, what with her naturally slow rate of progression through the water, and the strict Admiralty circular limiting the consumption of coal even on special service like ours, we did not make a very rapid passage across the south Atlantic to Monte Video. This place is charmingly situated on the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, and very appropriately named; for it can be seen far away off, for miles at sea, and itself commands magnificent views of its own beautiful harbour and the surrounding inland scenery.
Here despatches awaited us, as Tom Finch had previously been informed at Cape Coast Castle would be the case, ordering the Porpoise to proceed immediately to the Pacific and join the admiral on that station at Callao; and, accordingly, after one of the briefest of stays at a port which I have always longed since to have a more extended acquaintanceship with, we up anchor and paddled away to our assigned rendezvous--not by way of the "Horn," which we did not go round, as I had imagined we would, for it was far too stormy; but, through the Straits of Magellan, which are easy enough of passage to a steamer, independent almost of winds and currents, although somewhat perilous to sailing vessels, especially during the winter months.
Jocko seemed to feel the cold as soon as we began to run down towards Terra del Fuego, and had some additional garments placed round him; but true to what he evidently thought was his new and proper position, he would not take up his quarters with his "old friend and brother," Pompey, in the cook's caboose, preferring to shiver in Tom's cabin till he almost turned blue.
"Bress dat Massa Jocko!" Pompey would say after a vain attempt to coax him to share his hospitality. "I can't make he out nohow! Guess he tinks himself buckra ossifer and bery fine genelman, now de captin take um into cabin, sure; but, he no rale genelman to turn up nose at um ole frens! No, sah, I no spik to him no more!" and the negro cook would retire with ill-suppressed anger, which was all the more amusing to us from its having been occasioned by a monkey!
On our getting round into the Pacific, and sighting the coast towards Valparaiso, where we had to stop and coal once more, the Porpoise not having much storage room in her old bunkers, Jocko got more on friendly terms with the thermometer, making faces and jabbering away in his lingo, which unfortunately no one but himself could understand, just as if he were still in his native clime on the African continent.
Occasionally, too, as if his spirits carried him away on his restoration to warmer latitudes, he would indulge in one of his old skylarking bouts with the crew, and even made advances to Pompey in his caboose, which that worthy, in spite of his indignation at the manner in which he had been treated by Jocko when he assumed the dignity of the toga virilis, was only too glad to welcome and reciprocate; but, after one of these unusual unbendings, the monkey grew even more dignified and inapproachable than before, except to Tom and myself, who could do anything with him, and he then confined himself exclusively to the cabin and quarter-deck.
At Valparaiso we got further despatches hurrying us up to the Peruvian coast, where the admiral much wanted to use us as