Chapter IX: The Jeweled Monkey

Johnny Thompson did not in the least mind being lost. Truth was he got much joy from it. The sky was so blue, the morning air, as he left the abandoned native home, so crisp and balmy, he felt like singing a song.

True, he disliked worrying his friends, but the island of Haiti is not the world. He would find his way back in time. He had breakfasted well on cold guinea meat, parched corn and bananas. His bow and quiver of arrows were slung across his back. The trail was before him.

"With wild fruit and game I could live a half year through," he told himself.

For some time he made his way through rough uplands, where trees and brush obstructed his travel and only wild trails helped him on his way.

At last, however, he came upon an ancient man-made trail that led over a ridge and down upon the other side.

"Now I shall find my way to somewhere," he told himself. But this trail ran through rough uncultivated land. Mid-afternoon found him apparently some distance still from human habitation.

"Oh well," he sighed dropping down beside a cool spring, "the afternoon is hot. Guess I'll rest a while. The evening will be cool."

Had he persevered for another quarter of a mile he most surely would have met with a surprise; for there browsing close to the trail was a donkey, and on his back were two empty hampers. A few yards up the bank in the deep shade, he might have discovered two unusual patches of color, one orange, the other red. The orange spot was a white girl's jacket, the red a native girl's dress. Had he explored still further he would have found that the two girls were resting from the heat of the day. And these girls, as you may have guessed, were Doris and Nieta. They had chosen to return home from the ancient fort by a new and little used trail. Midas had not liked the plan. He had shown his displeasure by using a snail-like pace and by offering to eat every tree and bush that grew beside the trail.

At last, quite worn out by her constant flogging of the obstinate donkey Doris had given in to his whims and had allowed him to wander as he willed while she and Nieta rested.

"You can't lose a donkey," she had said to Nieta. "Not completely. He'll always find his way home. And he has nothing on his back but empty hampers."

They had been sitting there for some time dreamily gazing at the wavering patterns of sunlight and shadows woven on the mossy earth or looking up into the treetops when Doris gave a sudden start. Her eye had caught a peculiar gleam of white light.

"What can it be?" she asked herself. "There is nothing about a palm tree to reflect light that way."

She puzzled about this for some time. Then, since her keen eyes did not succeed in detecting the cause, she fell to wondering about Midas who had disappeared down the trail. "If he's gone home by himself it will be a blessing," she told herself.

"There are no lions and tigers to fear here. There are some very terrible snakes and lizards five feet long and wild hogs with tusks like razor blades, but they're not likely to trouble us. We--" She broke short off to stare. Once more in the midst of dense foliage she had caught that white flash of light. So white! So intense! Like the flash that comes from a mirror, only sharper and brighter. She caught her breath. There it was again. Here it was, there. Now, like a glimmering ghost, it was gone.

"Quick as lightning." She glanced through the leafy branches to the sky. Pale blue the sky was, not a cloud. She had suspected lightning. "But no," she told herself, "it's four hours before shower-time." Showers come with a convenient regularity in Haiti.

She studied the scanty leaves and many dry pods that hung directly above her. They had seated themselves beneath a "chattering woman," or so this odd tree is called. It was loaded with dry pods. These pods rattle and chatter in the wind. At this moment there was no wind.

Slowly her eyes roved over the dangling pods. Then, of a sudden, her gaze became fixed, her lips parted in a scream that died in forming.

Directly above her, peering down at her, was the smallest, strangest little face she had ever seen. The eyes were so wide in question, the brow so wrinkled, the whole expression so broadly intelligent that for the briefest part of a moment she was tempted to believe the creature human. He was, she realized at once, a marmoset, one of those smallest of monkeys who are so popular as pets among South American ladies of quality.

"Oh you monk! You cute little monkey! Where did you come from?" she cried.

The monkey blinked his eyes three times, then, as if to hide himself from her, put both hands over his eyes.

It was this movement that brought a low exclamation to the girl's lips for, once again, at the very instant his slim arms moved, there came that brilliant flash of light.

"He did it!" she told herself. "A monkey! But how could he?"

The answer came at once and with such sudden surprise as fairly sent her senses reeling. On the monkey's left forearm, like a lady's bejeweled bracelet, there gleamed a ring, set with a white stone.

"It's a diamond," she told herself, "a very large diamond! No bit of glass could flash like that. But where did he get it?"

In her mind was formed what she believed to be the answer. This was a pet monkey. There could be no question about that, for there are no wild monkeys in Haiti. This monkey had stolen his mistress' diamond ring and made away with it.

"It should be worth hundreds of dollars," she told herself. "It's probably a wedding ring, a priceless possession. Somehow we must catch the monkey and take the ring from him. He may tire of it and hide it or throw it away."

"How old it seems," she told herself after a moment's study. "All corroded. Can't have been worn for years. But how the diamond sparkles!"

Again the white stone flashed, as the monkey uncovered his eyes to resume his worried study of these strangers who had invaded his domain.

Doris touched the drowsy Nieta on the arm. Then, after placing a finger to lips for silence, pointed up at the tree.

"Sh'sh! Don't speak," she whispered. "Look up, up there among the pods on that thick branch."

Nieta did look up. She started suddenly and found herself staring and fully awake.

"See!" Doris whispered. "See that on his arm? It's a diamond ring; must be. And we must get it. Think of the reward! Think--if we never found the owner at all! Think--

"Oh--Oh!" she fairly cried. "He's gone! Hurry! Hurry!" she whispered excitedly. "Look! Look everywhere! We mustn't lose him! Think Nieta, think of the reward. Think if we find no owner at all!"

The native girl's eyes were bulging.

At that precise moment, Johnny Thompson came swinging down the trail.

At sight of the two excited girls he stopped short to stare in astonishment.

"Babes in the woods," he said at last. "Now where is the wicked old queen or the dragon, or--Oh, now I know," he said changing his tone. "You are Doris, Dorn's cousin. He's told me all about you. He--"

"Forget about it and be quiet." Doris took a step toward him. "There's a monkey in this tree and he has a diamond ring on his arm."

"A--a monkey!" The boy stared as if he thought her out of her senses. "A diamond ring on a monkey's arm!"

"Be quiet, I tell you." Doris put a finger over his lips. "It's true. I--we--we saw him! There! There he goes now!" she exclaimed as a brown streak surging from a branch set the dry pods rattling, then vaulted into the top of a cocoanut palm.

"And there he leaps again," said Johnny, losing himself in wild excitement. "Come on. We'll get him."

They all went tumbling down the hill.

They were quite out of sight of the "chattering woman" and still following the monkey when Doris stopped short. "I--I think I saw him."

"Where? Where is he?" demanded Nieta. Her eyes were wide with excitement.

"There! There!" The white girl's words came in a shrill whisper. "He's up in that small mahogany tree looking down at us."

"He's come to rest," said Johnny. "All we have to do now is to coax him down."

"Ye-e-s," said Doris, doubtfully. "That's all." They sat down side by side on a big flat stone to stare up at the grinning monkey and to catch now and then a fleeting glance of that gleaming stone.

"It's a diamond all right," said Johnny. "And my! what a whopper!"

"Wait," he said a moment later. "Monkeys like bananas. I saw a clump of wild ones back there. Perhaps I can find some ripe ones."

While he was gone Doris kept her eyes on the monkey, but once when she glanced down at Nieta she found to her surprise that she was paying no attention to the monkey. Instead, she had taken some curious white objects from a small leather sack carried by a string round her neck and was whispering to them.

"Nieta!" she whispered. "What in the world are you doing?"

"These," said Nieta quite soberly, "are the teeth of a yellow snake killed in the back of a cave in the dark of the moon. They are a powerful voodoo charm. They were given me by a very wise _Papa Lou_. A _Papa Lou_ is a voodoo priest."

At once Doris recalled what Dorn had told her of the strange voodoo charm.

"The snake, you know," Nieta went on quite solemnly, "is able when alive to charm a monkey. When the snake is dead his spirit remains near his teeth. I am telling him to charm the monkey and bring him down to us."

"Nieta," said Doris, shocked beyond belief, "you must not think such things. They are not true. It is truly wicked to believe them. There is but one living spirit outside ourselves and that is the spirit of the great Father."

"But do you not pray to that spirit?" The native girl's brow wrinkled. "Do you not--"

"Look!" Doris gripped her arm. "He leaped away over there. He--he's gone!"

By the time Johnny caught up with them, the monkey, by a succession of tree races and wild flying leaps, had led the girls down a precipitous slope to a spot where a rocky ledge hanging over a drop of some fifty feet brought their race and the monkey's to an end.

The monkey climbed out on a branch that appeared to hang over a precipice. He seemed at first to contemplate a flying leap to the top of a tall tree that grew on the lower slope. This would have proven a thrilling spectacle. Doris caught her breath as he hung there by one foot, looking down. The distance was thirty feet or more, a straight drop down. Would he do it? Dared he?

"Oh!" she said gripping at her breast. "If he dares we will never see him again."

Apparently Mr. Monk did not dare, for in time he drew himself up to a position of safety, then began polishing the glistening stone mounting of the ring with the furry back of his right hand.

From time to time he would pause to give the girls a knowing look and wink as if to say:

"See! Doesn't it shine? Don't you wish you had it?"

In good time Johnny caught up with them. They were delighted to see that his arms were filled with small ripe bananas.

"They are really good," he said, slipping the last bite of one in his mouth. "Ripened in the shade."

There followed the age old drama of a boy with something in his possession and a monkey who wants it. The monkey had been someone's pet. For this reason he did not have the fear of humans that possesses a wild monkey. Yet these children were strangers. More than that, two were white. His master had beyond doubt been a dusky native. He was in no hurry to come down. He came one branch at a time with many a backward look. More than once he paused to polish his diamond and wink.

"We'll get him," said Johnny half beside himself with suppressed excitement. "You'll see! He'll come."

He was coming. Little by little, branch by branch, he came. Now he was half way down, now three quarters. Now he was five yards away, now four, three, two. He stared wistfully at the banana held high.

Then, of a sudden, with a speed that was astonishing, he leaped.

Not upon another branch did he land, nor upon the ground, but squarely on the top of Johnny's head.

So surprised was Johnny that he jumped and yelled.

Came a snatching at his hand, then monkey and banana were gone--gone not up but down.

Leaping to the top of the ledge the monkey paused for a second to place the banana between his teeth, then without so much as a backward look, lowered himself over the precipice and was gone.

Throwing herself flat on the ground, then crawling slowly forward until the steep surface of the cliff was within her view, Doris watched him throw himself from fissure to fissure and from one narrow ledge to the next.

"He'll be killed," she said breathlessly.

But he was not. Almost before she could realize it, he had reached a spot near the bottom, where by a daring leap, he reached the top of a tree.

"We--we've lost him," she half sobbed. "We'll never see him again."

"Listen," said Nieta with a sudden start.

They did listen and to their waiting ears came the dull roll of distant thunder. In their wild chase they had completely forgotten that the time for the day's thunderstorm was at hand.

"Where are we?" Johnny asked.

Where indeed? The trail was far above them. Should they attempt to find it they must surely be half drowned before they reached it. A Haitian thunderstorm in the jungle is a fearful thing to contemplate.

"We'd better skirt the top of this cliff and make our way down to the sea," said Doris. "There must be some thatched huts down there that will furnish shelter."

Acting upon this plan, they dashed away.

The race after the monkey was nothing to this mad race with the storm. Now creeping along a rocky ledge, now clinging to a stout vine and dropping down, down, down, now racing over a wild hog's trail, now leaping a fallen tree to tear through a clump of brambles with the rumble and roar of the storm ever increasing they made their way forward, until, with a sudden breathless whoop, Johnny stopped at the edge of a wild cocoanut jungle to stare at the silent, blue-black sea.

"Not a hut," Doris moaned as her eyes swept the narrow coral beach.

"What's that yonder?" Johnny asked.

"A boat! A boat on the beach!" Doris exclaimed. "Hurray! We will tip it over and make a shelter of it."

"I wonder if we will ever see him again," she said to herself as, on reaching the beach, she paused for breath. She was thinking of the monkey with the jeweled arm.

The next instant a blinding flash of lightning and a crash of thunder sent her flying toward the boat, that seen from the level now seemed much larger and very far away.

"We'll never make it," she panted sobbingly. "We'll be half drowned."