Mappo was too frightened to move.
"Ah ha!" growled the tiger, away down deep in his throat. "At last I
have caught a monkey!"
Of course he had not yet really caught Mappo, but he soon would; there
was very little doubt of that. Mappo shivered. He wished he had not
tried to play the trick. If he had stayed safe up in the tree, the tiger
could not have gotten at him.
Mappo, with his queer little eyes, almost like yours, looked up toward
where he knew his tree-house was. He was looking to see if his papa or
mamma were in sight.
"Ha! There is no use looking up there!" said the cunning tiger, lashing
his striped sides with his long tail. "There's no one up there to help
you!"
Poor Mappo saw that this was so. There was none of his brothers or
sisters up in the tree-house. Nor was his papa or mamma there. The whole
monkey family had gone off to look for more cocoanuts, since those they
had had were all eaten up.
Just before starting out Mrs. Monkey had said:
"Where is Mappo?"
"Oh, he just went on ahead," said Bumpo, who had seen his brother
scrambling down the tree toward the ground. Bumpo did not know what his
brother was going to do, or that Mappo intended to play a trick with the
empty cocoanut shell.
"Oh, if he's gone on ahead, then we'll catch up to him," said Mrs.
Monkey. So away they all went, leaving the tree-house empty, and
expecting to meet Mappo somewhere on the road through the jungle.
But they did not, and there was poor Mappo on the ground right in front
of the bad tiger.
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