It was astonishing what a lot of spirit the wizened little brute could absorb. He was drunk, of course: hopelessly, blindly, madly drunk. But he was not paralytic, not even somnolent: and it seemed as if nothing could overcome him. So at last they gave up the attempt. They fetched a wooden box, and cut a notch in the edge. Then they put him on the barrel-top, and clapped the box over him, and after much manœuvring his gangrenous tail was made to come out through the notch. Anaesthetised or not, the operation on him was to proceed. John stared, transfixed, at that obscene wriggling stump which was all one could see of the animal: and out of the corner of his eye he could see at the same time the uproarious operators, the tar-stained knife. But the moment the blade touched flesh, with an awful screech the mommet contrived to fling off his cage--leapt on the surgeon’s head--leapt from there high in the air--caught the forestay--and in a twinkling was away and up high in the fore-rigging. Then began the hue and cry. Sixteen men flinging about in lofty acrobatics, all to catch one poor old drunk monkey. For he was drunk as a lord, and sick as a cat. His course varied between wild and hair-raising leaps (a sort of inspired gymnastics), and doleful incompetent reelings on a taut rope which threatened at every moment to catapult him into the sea. But even so they could never quite catch him. No wonder that all the children, now, stood open-mouthed and open-eyed on the deck beneath in the sun till their necks nearly broke--_such_ a Free Fun Fair and Circus! And no wonder that on that passenger-schooner which Marpole, before going below, had sighted drifting towards them from the direction of the Black Key channel, the ladies had left the shade of the awning and were crowding at the rail, parasols twirling, lorgnettes and opera-glasses in action, all twittering like a cage of linnets. Just too far off to distinguish the tiny quarry, they might well have wondered what sort of a bedlam-vessel of sea-acrobats the light easterly air was bearing them down upon. They were so interested that presently a boat was hoisted out, and the ladies--and some gentlemen as well--crowded into it. Poor little Jacko missed his hold at last: fell plump on the deck and broke his neck. That was the end of him--and of the hunt too, of course. The aerial ballet was over, in its middle, with no final tableau. The sailors began, in twos and threes, to slide to the deck. But the visitors were already on board. That is how the _Clorinda_ really was taken. There was no display of artillery--but then, Captain Marpole could hardly know this, seeing he was below in his bunk at the time. Henry was steering by that sixth sense which only comes into operation when the other five are asleep. The mate and crew had been so intent on what they were doing that the Flying Dutchman himself might have laid alongside, for all they cared. ii