XLVII.
ANIMALS UNDER GROUND.
HORSES IN MINES.—EFFECT OF AN EVEN TEMPERATURE ON HORSES AND MULES.—EFFECT OF DEPRIVATION OF LIGHT.—WALKING IN DARKNESS.—RATS IN MINES.—A MONKEY IN A SILVER MINE.—THE CONSTERNATION HE CREATED.—WHAT HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.—HIS UNHAPPY FATE.—A MONKEY AT SEA.—HIS PRANKS.—DEMOCRATIC HABITS.—HOW HE LOST HIS LIFE.—HIS LAST PERFORMANCE.—DOGS IN MINES, AND THE EFFECT OF UNDERGROUND CONFINEMENT.—JOY AT REACHING DAYLIGHT AGAIN.—TWO DOGS AT SEA, AND WHAT THEY DID.—A DOG SAILOR, AND WHAT HE DID.—HIS UNHAPPY END.
As a general thing, miners do not devote much of their time under ground to the care of pet animals. The horses and mules that are kept below are not regarded as pets, but as a part of the working force, and are required to do their whole duty. They are cared for just as well as animals of their kind in similar occupations above ground. Their stables are comfortable, and from their location the beasts can hardly be expected to suffer from cold, though they may sometimes find the heat rather severe. In many localities horses and mules that have been kept a long time under ground, in an unvarying temperature of seventy degrees or more, lose their hair, or a large portion of it. They never suffer from rain or snow, because there can be no storms hundreds or thousands of feet under ground; and they need no protection against cold where there is no cold. Sometimes they become blinded from constant deprivation of the light of day. They very soon learn to walk along certain ways and levels in complete darkness, though they manifest a decided preference for light rather than for its opposite.
The presence of rats in mines has been referred to elsewhere. In some mines they are rarely or never seen, whilein others they are numerous. The facilities for good living for rats are not abundant, and they certainly have small encouragement to stay in the levels and tunnels, when they might do much better, and live much happier, above ground. Generally they have no means of exit, as they cannot easily go out of the shaft; and the shaft is the only means of egress.
A MONKEY IN A MINE.
I once heard an amusing story of the consternation created in a mine by the introduction of a monkey. Somebody connected with the place had in a mysterious way become proprietor of a monkey, and one day he took the beast with him into the mine. The monkey made no objection to going there; but after reaching the tunnel where the men were at work, he became alarmed, and ran about very uncomfortably. He went from one place to another, attracted by the light, and in hopes of finding a friend. Many of the men had never seen a creature of his kind before; some thought it was the devil, as they could not imagine what else it could be, and some thought it an enormously overgrown rat.
One of the men was lying on his side, digging away at the base of a vein of coal. The monkey thought he recognized in this man a friend, or somebody who ought to be a friend, and went for him. The man knew nothing about the presence of the beast until the latter scrambled upon him and looked full in his face. The miner gave a scream, and fainted. Such a face had never before been turned towards his own, and his alarm was not at all surprising. The monkey left him, and then sprang among a group of men who were loading a car of coal. They stopped work, and shouted to their comrades that the devil was in the mine. In fact, within fifteen minutes that single animal had created an alarm among the men that was not quelled for two or three hours. The beast finally ran to the shaft, made a leap into the darkness, went down four hundred feet or more, and struck upon a pile of coal. As a monkey, he was not of much consequence after that.
Digressions are permissible in a popular work of this kind, and I take the liberty of giving a story of a monkey, which was told me quite recently by an eye-witness of his pranks.
PRANKS OF A MONKEY AT SEA.
“I was sailing as an ordinary seaman at one time on an American man-of-war. There were about five hundred men on board, and sometimes there was very little for us to do. Out in the East Indies, at one of the ports where we touched, we picked up a lot of monkeys. They belonged to the officers, but somehow the monkeys preferred to associate with the men. They had the free run of the whole ship, and did pretty much as they liked. They used to steal everything they could lay their hands on, and for a month or two the sailors had very little to do except playing with them.
“When we got out to sea, nearly all of the brutes died. We sailed up north in the Pacific Ocean, and it got rather cold. One monkey had brains enough to hunt out a warm place, and went down into the engine-room, where he used to sit and look at the stokers stirring up the fires. He would sit there, and make faces at them; and one of the officers said that the monkey, if he had any idea of a future state of existence, must imagine that he was in a sort of purgatory, and that the stokers stirring up the fire were keeping it hot for roasting a lot of fellows who were expected to arrive. He managed to live until we got back into the tropics again, and then he came out of his hiding-place, and used to go round among us as sociable as ever.
A LIVELY CHASE.
“He wasn’t an aristocrat, that monkey, and didn’t seem to have any high notions about society. One hour he would be in the cabin with the captain, and the next thing you would hear of him, he would be in the galley, making friends with the nigger cook. One day he took the cook’s cap, carried it into the cabin, and put it on the captain’s head. The captain did not like that sort of familiarity, and he ousted the beast from his cabin. He was constantly kicking up a row everywhere, but he was such an amusing duck that everybody liked him.
“When we were lying in the harbor of Nagasaki, we opened our gun-ports, just as we always did when at anchor. One of the favorite jumping-places of the monkey was to go from the end of a yard down to the port on the starboard bow,and whenever they were chasing him, he would be sure to make in that direction. One day we got up steam, and prepared to leave; and of course our ports were then triced up. Just as we were starting, the monkey was full of play, and made for his favorite jump. He did not stop to see that the port was closed, and that in the place where he jumped there was nothing for him to light on; so down he went into the water. We threw a rope over the side of the ship, and he caught hold, and climbed up. He was always mighty careful after that about his jumping-place.
“Occasionally, when we were lying idle, and everybody was tired, the officers would get up a purse of five dollars, and then pipe the men to catch the monkey. The monkey would start up the rigging, and the men would go for him; and the first man that got him would have the money. You see, there would be over four hundred men in the rigging. The monkey could jump and run much better than they could, but they were so thick that almost everywhere he went he was in danger of lighting on a man. He seemed to enjoy the fun just as much as anybody else, and he would make a lively race all over the rigging. Sometimes he would go clear up to the main truck, and sit on the top. It was rather tough work to get him there, and it was no use climbing for him, because before a man could get hold of him he would be sure to jump somewhere else. So we had a rule, that when he got there, we tried to shake or frighten him off in some way; and if he was caught in that jump, the catch did not count.
“We had lots of fun that way. The officers would stay on the deck, and see the fun; and the men would do their best to catch the beast, as they knew that somebody would make five dollars out of the job. Every few days we had a race of this kind, but there came a time when we had the last one. The rule always had been that the monkey should not be hurt, but should be caught uninjured, and brought down.
“One day the captain had his charts out, spread over the table in the cabin—his very best charts, and things that werepretty important. He was studying them, and marking off his ship’s course, and left them a few minutes, to go into his state-room. That infernal monkey was around, and as soon as the captain was gone, he jumped on the table, dipped his paw into the inkstand, and began marking out a course on the chart to suit himself. He daubed that chart all over with ink, and when the captain came out of his state-room, and found what had been done, he was about the maddest man you ever saw. He made a grab for the monkey, but of course the monkey got away. He struck out for the deck, and shinned up into the rigging.
“The captain came out without his cap, and was perfectly white with rage. We saw that something had happened, but what it was we did not know. We were steaming slowly along, and the men were scattered all about the deck.
“‘Pipe all hands to catch the monkey!’ said the captain. ‘Ten dollars for anybody that gets him, dead or alive!’
“We knew there was business then, and we went for the monkey; and the monkey knew there was business too. He understood there was no time for fooling. I fancied that that monkey knew it was a race for life or death, and he never tried so hard before to keep out of our way. Every man who could be spared from the management of the ship was sent into the rigging. We chased him from mainmast to mizzenmast, and from bowsprit back to the stern. He went into all parts of the rigging, and had several narrow escapes.
SITTING ON A STEAM-PIPE.
“We were closing in on him, and had him in very tight quarters, when, all of a sudden, he played a trick which he had never tried before. He jumped to the top of the smoke-stack, and then to the steam-pipe, and there he sat. The smoke-stack was too hot for him, but the steam-pipe was cool and comfortable. Our ship, you know, was a low-pressure one, and we only used the steam-pipe when we let off steam, or had an excess of it.
“Of course nobody could shin up that steam-pipe, and there sat the monkey for at least a minute. While we were all wondering what to do, one of the boys went to the pipe, and pulled the string of the fog-whistle.
“Well, sir, there was a jet of steam, and that unfortunate monkey was blown up about twenty feet into the air, and came down on the deck, stone dead, with every hair singed off him. He looked just as if he had been through the barber’s hands, and was preparing to go to church. The boy picked him up, carried him to the captain, and got his ten dollars. We did not have any more monkeys on the ship after that.”
UNHAPPINESS OF DOGS.
Pet dogs are sometimes kept in mines, but they soon lose their activity, and appear so unhappy that the miners, out of pity for them, take them to the open air again. I once saw a dog that had been kept a fortnight in a silver mine, without once seeing daylight. I happened to be at the entrance when he was brought to the surface, and never did I see a dog manifest more joy than did this one. As soon as he was placed on the ground, saw daylight, and snuffed the clear, open air, he ran about, jumping first upon one and then upon another of the miners, and seemed to thank them for his release from prison. He kept this up for a quarter of an hour, and then he darted about in wide circles, running at the very top of his speed, and paying no heed to anybody. He ran in this way until fairly exhausted, and then came up to his master, and lay down at his feet. His master then endeavored to coax him into the cage, to descend the shaft again, but the dog would not move. As his master stepped into the cage, he tried to call him down, but the dog turned, and ran away. He had had quite enough of underground life.
I have seen dogs that had been kept a long time on shipboard act in just the same way when going on land. Sailing once from San Francisco, across the Pacific Ocean, we picked up, just before our departure, two small dogs—one a Skye terrier, and the other a black and tan. For the first few days they were not in love with sea life, but before we had been a week on our voyage, they were accustomed to it, and wandered around the ship at will. They made friends with everybody. The black and tan had the run of the main cabin, but the Skye lived forward with the men. The twodogs played together a great deal. The black and tan would go forward, and apparently invite the Skye aft. He would come, and they would play about the deck; but he never ventured into the cabin. He appeared to know his place, and kept it very carefully.
Twenty-four hours before we sighted land, when it was more than a hundred and fifty miles away, those dogs began to sniff the air uneasily, and rather wistfully indicated that they knew we were approaching shore, and that they wanted to get upon it. But when we entered harbor, they did not manifest any particular wish for the land; and though they looked around the deck, and off towards the shore, they showed no desire to seek it.
It was morning when we came to anchor, and we immediately made our official visits, and returned to the ship about noon. Opposite our anchoring-place there was a partially wooded point, which, we thought, would give us a pleasant promenade; and so, in the afternoon, four of us went ashore, taking the dogs with us.
TAKING THE DOGS ASHORE.
They were reluctant to get into the boat, and the sailors were obliged to carry them down the gangway stairs to the boat, and put them ashore when we touched land. But as soon as they had touched it, and realized that they were on solid earth, they began to caper and run about in the most extravagant way. I think that before we had walked a mile those dogs had run at least ten miles, and had examined, in their canine way, every bush, and tree, and shrub in the region. Several dogs of ten times their size were wandering about, but these little brutes gave chase to them as readily as though the strangers had been rats. When they came back to our landing-place, they did not want to enter the boat, and we had to carry them in.
After that, whenever a boat went ashore, there was no occasion to invite the dogs or urge them to go. The very first instant they saw any preparations for leaving the ship, they would descend the gangway, and enter the boat; and if driven back, they would look wistfully over the side, andsometimes fairly howl with sorrow. On two or three occasions, when we allowed them to descend to the foot of the gangway stairs, and pushed off without them, they jumped into the water, and followed us.
A QUADRUPEDAL MARINER.
I may still further digress, and say, that on one occasion we had at sea with us a dog evidently born to a marine life. He was really attached to that ship, and apparently never cared to go ashore. If taken on shore by the captain or one of the officers, he would quite likely get lost; but he always knew enough to make his way back to the landing. If the ship was tied to the dock, he could select her from dozens of others. He never made a mistake, and never went aboard the wrong craft. At sea he would stand his watch as regularly as any one of the officers. When the starboard watch was called, he roused himself up, and went on deck. Sometimes, when he would be lying asleep, a call would be made for all hands, and he would be the first on deck. The rest of the crew, when called out, were generally obliged to put on some article of dress—at any rate, a hat, and possibly a coat; but Charley, as the dog was called, had no toilet to make, and consequently he would be the first at his post.
If he saw a man pulling at a line, he would seize it, and pull also; and sometimes, when there was no chance for him to pull at the line, he would seize the rear man by the seat of his trousers, and pull away for dear life. The men didn’t like this sort of thing, as sometimes he included a little flesh in the folds of the trousers; and Charley got a good many threshings in consequence. But he was so anxious to do something, that within fifteen minutes after he was threshed, if he saw a line of men hauling in a rope which he could not get hold of, in would go his teeth into the trousers of the rear man,—and he had long and strong teeth too.
Every dog has his day, and Charley had his. As before stated, he could pick out his own craft among dozens of ships. If she was anchored from the shore, he would come down to the water’s edge, give a look around, and discover the ship. Then he would strike boldly into the water, and swim towardsher. Somebody would see him, and a rope would be lowered, with a noose at the end. Charley would put his fore paws in the noose, seize the rope with his teeth, and be drawn on deck.
CHARLEY’S FATE.
One day, when the ship was at anchor in the Bay of Panama, Charley started to swim out, as usual. The bay was full of sharks, and just as he had reached the side of the ship, and was putting his paws through the noose lowered to receive him, there was a swirl of the water. The head and belly of a large shark were visible for a moment, and with a single yelp of pain and terror, Charley was dragged under the water, and never seen again.