A far different fate, I am sorry to record, befell another monkey of mine, in another ship, and in a very different quarter of the globe.  I was then in command of the Lyra, on the homeward voyage from China, after the embassy under Lord Amherst had been concluded.  We touched on our way to Calcutta at the Philippine Islands, and, amongst other live stock, laid in a monkey which had seen the world.  He was born, they assured us, at Teneriffe, bred at Cadiz, and had afterwards made the voyage across the Pacific Ocean, via Lima and Acapulco, to Manilla.  Our extensive traveller had made good use of his time and opportunities, and was destined to see a good deal more of men and manners, indeed almost to make out the circuit of the globe.  This distinguished monkey had a particular liking for the marines, who caressed and fed him, and sometimes even ventured to teach him to play off tricks on Jack, which the sailors promised one day to pay back with interest on the soldiers.  In so diminutive a vessel as a ten-gun brig, there is but a small party of marines, merely a sergeant’s guard, and no commissioned officer, otherwise I hardly think the following trick would have been attempted.

One Sunday, while going the formal division rounds, I came to a figure which at first sight puzzled me not a little.  This was no other than our great traveller, the monkey, rigged out as a marine, and planted like a sentry on the middle step of the short ladder, which, in deep-waisted vessels, is placed at the gangway, and reaches from the deck to the top of the bulwark.  The animal was dressed up in a complete suit of miniature uniform, made chiefly of the coloured buntin used for flags with sundry bits of red baize purloined from the carpenters.  His regimental cap was constructed out of painted canvas; and under his lower jaw had been forced a stock of pump-leather, so stiff in itself, and so tightly drawn back, that his head was rendered totally immoveable.  His chin, and great part of the cheeks, had been shaved with so much care, that only two small curled mustachios and a respectable pair of whiskers remained.  His hair behind being tied back tightly into a queue, the poor devil’s eyes were almost starting from his head; while the corners of his mouth being likewise tugged towards the ears by the hair-dresser’s operations, the expression of his countenance became irresistibly ludicrous.  The astonished recruit’s elbows were then brought in contact and fastened behind by a lashing, passed round and secured to the middle step of the ladder, so that he could not budge an inch from his position.  One of the ship’s pistols, fashioned like a musket, and strapped to his shoulder, was tied to his left hand, which again had been sewed by the sail-maker to the waistband of his beautifully pipe-clayed trousers; in short, he was rigged up as a complete sea-soldier in full uniform.