Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 23)( Page 4 ) The Fighting Baboon

The white man, livid with fury, struggled and kicked, but the wrist loop of his sjambok held him prisoner and he could do nothing. That was the moment when a panic-stricken boy plucked up courage enough to call me; and that was the scene we saw as we ran out of the little shop.  Jim would not strike the white man: but his face was a muddy grey, and it was written there that he would rather die than give up the dog. Before I reached them it was clear to us all what had happened; Jim was protesting to Seedling and at the same time calling to me; it was a jumble, but a jumble eloquent enough for us, and all intelligible. Jim's excited gabble was addressed with reckless incoherence to Seedling, to me, and to Jock! "You threw him in; you tried to kill him.  He did it.  It was not the dog.  Kill him, Jock, kill him.  Leave him, let him fight.  You said it--Let him fight!  Kill him, Jock!  Kill!  Kill!  Kill!" Then Seedling did the worst thing possible; he turned on me with,-- "Call off your dog, I tell you, or I'll shoot him and your nigger too!" "We'll see about that!  They can fight it out now," and I took the sjambok from Jim's hand and cut it from the white man's wrist.  "Now! Stand back!"  And he stood back. The baboon was quite helpless.  Powerful as the brute was, and formidable as were the arms and gripping feet, it had no chance while Jock could keep his feet and had strength to drag and hold the chain tight.  The collar was choking it, and the grip on the stomach--the baboon's own favourite and most successful device--was fatal. I set my teeth, and thought of the poor helpless dogs that had been decoyed in and treated the same way.  Jim danced about, the white seam of froth on his lips, hoarse gusts of encouragement bursting from him as he leant over Jock, and his whole body vibrating like an over-heated boiler.  And Jock hung on in grim earnest, the silence on his side broken only by grunting efforts as the deadly tug--tug--tug went on. Each pull caused his feet to slip a little on the smooth worn ground; but each time he set them back again, and the grunting tugs went on. It was not justice to call Jock off; but I did it.  The cruel brute deserved killing, but the human look and cries and behaviour of the baboon were too sickening; and Seedling went into his hut without even a look at his stricken champion. Jock stood off, with his mouth open from ear to ear and his red tongue dangling, blood-stained and panting, but with eager feet ever on the move shifting from spot to spot, ears going back and forward, and eyes-- now on the baboon and now on me--pleading for the sign to go in again. Before evening the baboon was dead. The day's excitement was too much for Jim.  After singing and dancing himself into a frenzy round Jock, after shouting the whole story of the fight in violent and incessant gabble over and over again to those who had witnessed it, after making every ear ring and every head swim with his mad din, he grabbed his sticks once more and made off for one of the kraals, there to find drink for which he thirsted body and soul.