But Jack had a friend, and he never embarked on his voyages into the
far-away dreamland without calling on his old chum Murph to join him.
Yes, Murph gambolled with him in the tropical jungles, Murph frolicked
with him in the tall grasses, Murph and he amused themselves together at
never-ending games of play; if ever it was granted him to see his native
land again, he fully hoped to take Murph along with him.
Poor Jack! he did not understand that the worthy Murph, acrobat as he
was, would have found it hard to follow him in the lofty regions where
his congeners are wont to disport themselves, nearer to the stars than
the earth. Not a doubt of it, Murph would have had to kick his heels at
the foot of a tree, while his friend was off and away aloft; and the
smallest of his perils would have been to find himself, on looking
round, face to face with a python-snake, just uncoiling his folds to
spring, or else, on the river-banks, confronted with the gaping jaws of
a crocodile.
Murph could play dominoes, tell fortunes, hunt for a handkerchief in a
spectator’s pocket, read the paper. Murph had many other accomplishments
besides, but it is far from certain that he would have extricated
himself successfully from a _tête-à-tête_ of this sort with beasts that
could boast neither his education nor his manners.
The liking was reciprocal. From the very first Jack had taken a fancy to
the big woolly-coated dog, as woolly as a sheep, who never barked or
growled or grumbled or showed his teeth—so unlike the other dogs in the
menagerie; in the same way Murph, the big dog, had formed an affection
for the well-behaved, sad-faced little ape, who never pulled his tail
and never tried to scratch out his eyes.
As it happened, the showman had made up his mind to make them perform
together. Murph was the best runner in the troupe; there was nobody like
him for a round trot or a swinging gallop, for wheeling suddenly round
and dropping to his knees just before making his exit, nobody to match
Murph, always good-tempered and imperturbable, always on the look-out,
with his bright eyes half hid under the bushy eyebrows, for a bit of
sugar and a round of applause.
Jack, for his part, had very soon become a brilliant horseman, lissom
and fearless, an adept at leaping through the hoops and vaulting the
bars. Thus the two seemed made for each other, both in body and mind.
They bore the hardships of the life together, and they shared its
successes; by dint of standing so often back against back and muzzle
against muzzle, they found their hearts brought close together too, and
became fast friends. Murph was never to be seen without Jack; wherever
Jack was, Murph was there as well; they lived curled up on the same rug,
in the same corner, under the same table, Murph licking Jack in the
neck, and Jack stroking Murph’s nose, each bound to each in perfect
trust and amity.
V
Murph was older than Jack by nearly nine years, and his years made him
nearly as serious-minded as his friend. But it was a different sort of
gravity. Murph was neither morose nor disillusioned; his was the gentle
seriousness of old age. He had seen many things since he had been in the
world, but life did not appear to have left only its dregs in him. He
still believed in springtide, in friendship, in the master’s kind heart;
then he had neither family nor native land to regret, for he had been
born in the menagerie of a father and mother broken in like himself to
circle the trapeze and leap through the hoop.
His horizon was bounded by the four walls of the caravan in which, as a
puppy still sucking at his mother’s breast, he had been carted from fair
to fair. Day by day he had watched from behind the window-panes the long
procession of cities and countries filing past; he had visited most
parts of Europe, in company with the strange _omnium-gatherum_ of apes,
goats, parrots, and dogs that at each halting-place was the delight of
the infant population. But he had never taken it upon him to covet the
kingdom of this world; he had never craved to roam at liberty through
the streets; never, in one word, had he so much as dreamt of playing
truant. He was a very learned dog, and, like other learned people, he
lived absorbed in his own thoughts, self-centred within the circle of
his meditations, seeking nothing of things outside.