For a few moments Jacko sat on the main-cap, chattering at such a rate that, had it been dark, one of the men said, you could have seen the sparks of fire from his teeth.  I do not quite believe this; but certainly I never witnessed such an expression of fear.  A dozen men were soon pouring into the top, while two others were stealing up the stay, and four or five had got into the topmast-shrouds, to cut off his retreat in that direction; finally, an active fellow leaped from the rigging to the topmast, and sliding down the well-greased spar, almost plumped on the devoted head of this master of the revels.  It was now absolutely necessary for Jacko to do something; so he made a clear run down the main lift to the lower yard-arm.  The gunner’s mate foreseeing this manoeuvre, had sprung to guard his department, and had already lain out as far as the inner boom iron, with a gasket in his hand, and quite certain of catching the chase.  Not a bit!  “A gunner’s mate catch a monkey!” The fable of the Tortoise and the Hare affords but a feeble simile to characterize such a match; and before old Hard-a-weather and his gasket had reached the yard-arm, our nimble Mona had trotted half-way up the leach of the topsail, and was seated as familiarly on the bridle of the maintop-bowline, as if he had been perched on the feathery branch of a cocoa-nut tree, enjoying the sea breeze, in his native island, amongst the beautiful Cape de Verdes.

The sailors were now fairly baffled, and still more so when the expert rogue chose to climb a little higher, and then to walk deliberately along the standing part of the main-topsail brace to the mizen-topmast head; whence, as if to divert himself, or force his pursuers to mingle admiration with their rage, he made a flying leap downwards to the peak haulyards, scampering along the single part till he reached the end of the gaff.  There he sat laughing at a hundred and fifty men and boys, employed in the vain attempt to catch one monkey!

Sailors are certainly not men to give up a pursuit lightly; but after an hour of as hard labour as I ever witnessed, they were all obliged to relinquish the chase from sheer fatigue, and poor Jacko was pardoned by acclamation.  The captain of the foretop, however, a couple of days afterwards, more out of fun than from any ill-will on the old grog score, gave the monkey’s ear a pinch, upon which the animal snapped at his thumb, and bit it so seriously that the man was obliged to apply to the doctor.  When this was reported to me by the surgeon, I began to think my four-footed friend was either getting rather too much licence, or that too many liberties were taken with him, so I gave orders that in future he should be let alone.  Nevertheless, Jacko contrived to bite two more of the people, one of whom was the sergeant, the other the midshipmen’s boy.  These were all wounded in one day; and when the surgeon came to me next morning, as usual, with the sick-list in his hand, he was rather in dudgeon.