But the little fellows were not thus easily dislodged.

The attempt served only to send them higher up. They seemed to be everywhere over the heads of the people.

Finally, having thoroughly investigated the top of the tent, several of the larger simians decided to take a closer look at the audience. At the moment the audience did not know of this plan, or they might have taken measures to protect themselves.

The first intimation they had of the plans of the mischievous monkeys, was when a woman uttered a piercing shriek, startling everyone in the tent.

"What is it?" shouted someone.

"Oh, my hat! My hat!" she cried after discovering what had happened to her.

The eyes of the audience wandered from her up to where a monkey was dangling by its tail far above their heads. The animal had in its hands a flower-covered hat, so large that when the monkey tried to put it on, it almost entirely concealed his body.

So suddenly had the hat been torn from the head of the owner that hatpins were broken short off while the little thief "shinned" a rope with his prize.

Failing to make the hat fit, Mr. Monkey began pulling the flowers out; then picking them to pieces, he showered the particles down over the heads of the audience.

This was great sport for the monkey, but no fun at all for the owner of the hat. The woman hurried from her seat, red-faced and humiliated. Phil Forrest had chanced to be a witness to the act. He stepped forward as she descended to the concourse and touched his hat.

"Was the hat a valuable one, madam?" he asked.

"Very."

"I am sorry. If you will come with me to the office of the manager I am quite sure he will make good your loss."

"Do you belong to the circus, sir?"

"I do."

The woman gladly accompanied him to Mr. Sparling, and there was made happy by having the price of her ruined hat handed over to her without a word of objection.

In the meantime trouble had been multiplying at a very rapid rate under the big top. Everyone was shouting, attendants were yelling orders to each other, and now Mr. Sparling, hurrying in, added his voice to the din.

Hats in all parts of the tent seemed to fly toward the roof almost magically, to come tumbling down a few minutes later hopeless wrecks.

Once the monkeys got a tall silk hat. This they used for an aerial football, tossing it to each other as they leaped from rope to rope at their dizzy height.

One monkey was discovered peering down at a certain point in the audience with an almost fascinated gaze. Something down there attracted him. Cautiously the little fellow let himself down a rope to the side wall, then, unnoticed by the people, crept down through the aisle. Slowly one black little hand reached up and jerked from the head of an old gentleman a pair of gold spectacles.

The man uttered a yell as he felt the spectacles being torn from him, and made a frantic effort to save them. But the gla.s.ses, in the hands of the monkey, were already halfway up the aisle and a moment more the monkey was twisting the bows into hard knots and hurling pieces of gla.s.s at the spectators.

"Catch them! Catch them!" shouted Mr. Sparling.

"How, how?" answered a showman.

"Somebody--"

"I'll go up and get them," spoke up Teddy Tucker. Teddy simply could not keep out of trouble. He was sure to be in the thick of it whenever a disturbance was abroad.

"That's a good plan. How are you going to do it?"

"I'll show you. I'll shake 'em down if you will catch them when they reach the ring."

"Yes, but be careful that you don't fall."

"Don't you worry about me!"

Teddy untied a rope from a quarter pole, straightened it out and throwing off his coat and hat, began going up the rope hand over hand. The monkeys peered down curiously from their perches, chattering and discussing the little figure that was on its way up to join them.

Teddy reached the platform of the trapeze performers. From there he climbed a short rope that led to a smaller trapeze bar higher up, thence to the aerial bars, where the whole bunch of monkeys were sitting, scolding loudly.

"Shoo!" said Teddy. "Get out of here! Better get a net and catch them down there," shouted Teddy, standing up on the bars without apparent thought of his own danger.

"Look out that we don't have to catch you!" called Mr. Sparling warningly.

Teddy picked his way gingerly across the bars shooing the monkeys ahead of him, now holding to a guide rope so that he might not by any chance slip through and drop to the ring forty feet below him, and all the while waving his free hand to frighten the monkeys.

A few of them leaped to a rope some eight or ten feet away, down which they went to the ring and up another set of ropes before the show people below could catch them.

While Teddy was thus engaged, the whole troop of monkeys swung back on the under side of the aerial bars beneath his feet.

"Shoo! Shoo!" he shouted. "You rascals, I'll fix you when I get hold of you, and don't you forget that for a minute."

He turned, cautiously making his way back, when the lively, mischievous little fellows shinned up the rope by which he had let himself down to the serial bars.

"I'll drive you all over the top of this tent, but I'll get you,"

Teddy cried.

Down below the audience was shouting and jeering. The people refused to leave the tent so long as such an exhibition was going on. No one paid the least attention to the "grand concert"

that was in progress at one end of the big top, so interested were all in the Circus Boy's giddy chase.

"I'm afraid he will fall and kill himself," groaned Mr. Sparling.

"You can't hurt Teddy," laughed Phil. "He can go almost anywhere that a monkey could climb. But he'll never get them." Phil was laughing with the others, for the sight was really a funny one.

"Oh, look what they've done!" exclaimed one of the performers.

"They've pulled up the rope," said Mr. Sparling hopelessly.

"Now he certainly is in a fix," laughed Phil.

The monkeys, after shinning the rope, had mischievously hauled it up after them, acting with almost human intelligence. One of them carried the free end of it off to one side and dropped it over a guy rope. This left Tucker high and dry on the aerial bars with no means at hand to enable him to get back to earth.

The audience caught the significance of it and howled l.u.s.tily.

"Now, I should like to know how you are going to get down?"

shouted Mr. Sparling.

Teddy looked about him questioningly, and off at the grinning monkeys, that perched on rope and trapeze, appeared to be enjoying his discomfiture to the full.

"I--I guess I'll have to do the world's record high dive!"