“I’ll go down and get some, and then I’ll run on and find my papa and mamma and brothers and sisters,” thought Mappo.  “They will want some of this cocoanut.”

Down he went, and began picking up the bits of cocoanut.  They were rather small pieces and Mappo had to eat a great many of them before he felt he had enough.  Each piece was a little way beyond the next one, and Mappo kept on walking along slowly as he picked them up.

Finally he saw a very large piece.  He reached for it with his paw, and then, all at once something happened.

Something like a big spider’s web seemed to fall down out of a tree right over Mappo.  In an instant he was all tangled up—­his paws and tail were caught.  He yelled and chattered in fright, and tried to get loose, but the more he tried, the tighter the meshes of the net fell about him.

Poor Mappo was caught.  He had been caught by a hunter’s net in the jungle, and the pieces of cocoanut were only bait, just as you bait a mouse trap with cheese.

“Oh!” cried Mappo, in his shrill, chattering voice.  “Oh dear!  I am caught!”

Tighter and tighter the net closed over him.

CHAPTER IV

MAPPO IN A BOX

Poor Mappo was not a merry monkey just then.  Usually he was a jolly little fellow, laughing and chattering in his own way, and playing tricks on his brothers and sisters.  Now he felt very little like doing anything of that sort.

“And to think that I was going to play a trick with the empty cocoanut shell, just a little while before this happened to me,” thought Mappo, as he tried very hard to get loose from the net in which he was all tangled up.  “I wonder what has happened to me, anyhow,” said Mappo to himself.

And, as Mappo did not find out for some little time I will tell you.  He had been caught by a native hunter, in a net made from long pieces of a trailing vine, which was as strong as a rope.

In the country where Mappo lived there were many people called natives—­that is they had never lived in any country but their own, and they were a queer sort of people.

They wore very few clothes, for it was too hot to need many.  They were a black, savage people, and they lived by hunting with their spears, and bows and arrows.  They hunted wild animals—­lions, tigers, elephants and monkeys.  Some of the wild animals they used for food, and others they sold to white men who wanted them for circuses and menageries.  And monkeys were generally the easiest to catch.

Some of these black, half-clothed, savage natives had spread a vine net in the forest.  The net, being made of vines, could not be seen until some animal got close to it.  And to make monkeys come close to the net, so it would fall down over them, when one end was pulled loose by a native (hidden behind a tree) bits of cocoanut were sprinkled about.  Monkeys are very fond of cocoanut, and the natives knew, when the little long-tailed creatures went to pick up the white pieces, that they would come nearer and nearer to the trap-net, until they were caught.  That was what had happened to Mappo.