ten until three o'clock in the morning
He performed wonderfully well ; it was difficult to realize that the hairy , ravening , agile , and grotesquely-moving beast , from which every visitor shrank back aghast , was only jolly Jack Gale serving out his hard servitude for an anticipated bride , very much after the ancient fashion of Laban 's kinsman . The cunning rascal had a fashion of leaping at the bars when curious people came too near , driving them away from a narrow inspection by his hideous yells and angry mouthings . But his roars , which were really artistic in their brutal sonorousness , served us a good purpose . As I was night editor on the _ Daily Highflyer _ , and kept pretty close from ten until three o'clock in the morning , and Jack was caged until the hour at which I went to work , it was not easy for us to meet . So we exchanged the salutations of the day and a few scraps of news by using our old signals , learned long ago in the telegraph office . Instead of the rat-tat-tat of the little instrument so familiar to both of us , Jack , by a series of long or short howls and grunts , gave me his message , to which I replied by careless taps of my cane or hand , nobody suspecting that my casual movements meant anything , nor supposing for an instant that a sudden burst of African forest yells , which sent a fat lady nearly into hysterics , and made two small children howl with apprehension , merely meant `` She with the pink bonnet is my Clara . '' And it must be confessed that Clara Coriander was an exceedingly attractive young person .