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But Jocko wanted something more; and presently Neddy, who was reading in his hammock on the piazza, heard a great cackling among the hens, and looked up to see the monkey swinging by his tail from a bough, holding the great cock-a- doodle by his splendid tail, while all the twenty hens clucked and cackled with wrath and fear at such a dreadful prank.
This time grandpa opened both eyes at once, and stared as if he saw a hobgoblin before him; then he snatched off the spectacles, and caught up his cane, crying angrily, "You rascal, how dare you!" But Jocko tossed the paper in his face, and with one jump lighted on the back of old Tom, the big yellow cat, who lay asleep close by.
I suppose you have been interviewing old Jalap about your liver, eh, you hypochondriacal young donkey! Why, Monte Video is a regular paradise for the monkey tribe, and Jocko will be in his element there!" "But I don't suppose we'll stop there, Tom; didn't you say that you thought it probable that we would have to go round Cape Horn and join the squadron at Callao?"
For one brief moment a sense of the ludicrous struggled with the just anger of the mob. That moment decided the fate of Jocko. There came a thunderous rap at the door, and there stood a policeman with Jim, the runaway, in his grasp. "Does this boy " he shouted, and stopped short, his gaze riveted upon the monkey.
Jim broke the silence when a blast fiercer than the rest shook the old house. "'Tain't right," he said dolefully, "I know it ain't, Jock! There's Tom and Foley gone off an' 'listed, and them only four years older nor me. What's four years?" This with a sniff of contempt. Jocko gazed straight ahead. Four years of scrubbing-brushes and stealthy grabs at his tail on the stairs!
Luigi rested his instrument upon its pole, loosed Jocko to his gambols, and tuned up. The strains which most ears would have found harsh and discordant sounded pleasantly enough to the listening Timothy, who nodded his head complacently, wishing and thinking: "Now he's off! May he keep at it till he wheedles not only the pence but the dollars out the pockets o' them that hears!
Then he took another pull, following directions to the letter. The last ray of the evening sun stole through the open window as Jocko arose and wandered unsteadily toward the bedroom, the door of which stood ajar. There was no one within. On the wall hung Mrs. Hoffman's brocade shawl and Sunday hat. Jocko had often watched her put them on.
In vain the boy and the sailorman looked with all their might at the place where he had gone down; in vain they poked a long pole into the water after him; in vain did Bob and Jocko paddle in the canoe all over the place where Black Jim Lewis had sunk.
Then she frowned and buried her pretty face on Timothy's shoulder and raised it only when Jocko had hopped another way. But suddenly out of his selections, Luigi began that ancient tune, "A Life on the Ocean Wave, A Home on the Rolling Deep" and then disaster!
Neddy was quite willing to let him go; but John was saved his journey, for in the morning poor Jocko was found dead in a trap, where his inquisitive head had been poked to see what the cheese tasted like. So he was buried by the river, and every one felt much relieved; for the man never came back, thinking Jocko dead when he left him.
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