Chapter IV
The Apes
In the forest of the table-land a mile back from the ocean old Kerchakthe Ape was on a rampage of rage among his people.
The younger and lighter members of his tribe scampered to the higherbranches of the great trees to escape his wrath; risking their livesupon branches that scarce supported their weight rather than face oldKerchak in one of his fits of uncontrolled anger.
The other males scattered in all directions, but not before theinfuriated brute had felt the vertebra of one snap between his great,foaming jaws.
A luckless young female slipped from an insecure hold upon a highbranch and came crashing to the ground almost at Kerchak's feet.
With a wild scream he was upon her, tearing a great piece from her sidewith his mighty teeth, and striking her viciously upon her head andshoulders with a broken tree limb until her skull was crushed to ajelly.
And then he spied Kala, who, returning from a search for food with heryoung babe, was ignorant of the state of the mighty male's temper untilsuddenly the shrill warnings of her fellows caused her to scamper madlyfor safety.
But Kerchak was close upon her, so close that he had almost grasped herankle had she not made a furious leap far into space from one tree toanother--a perilous chance which apes seldom if ever take, unless soclosely pursued by danger that there is no alternative.
She made the leap successfully, but as she grasped the limb of thefurther tree the sudden jar loosened the hold of the tiny babe where itclung frantically to her neck, and she saw the little thing hurled,turning and twisting, to the ground thirty feet below.
With a low cry of dismay Kala rushed headlong to its side, thoughtlessnow of the danger from Kerchak; but when she gathered the wee, mangledform to her bosom life had left it.
With low moans, she sat cuddling the body to her; nor did Kerchakattempt to molest her. With the death of the babe his fit ofdemoniacal rage passed as suddenly as it had seized him.
Kerchak was a huge king ape, weighing perhaps three hundred and fiftypounds. His forehead was extremely low and receding, his eyesbloodshot, small and close set to his coarse, flat nose; his ears largeand thin, but smaller than most of his kind.
His awful temper and his mighty strength made him supreme among thelittle tribe into which he had been born some twenty years before.
Now that he was in his prime, there was no simian in all the mightyforest through which he roved that dared contest his right to rule, nordid the other and larger animals molest him.
Old Tantor, the elephant, alone of all the wild savage life, feared himnot--and he alone did Kerchak fear. When Tantor trumpeted, the greatape scurried with his fellows high among the trees of the secondterrace.
The tribe of anthropoids over which Kerchak ruled with an iron hand andbared fangs, numbered some six or eight families, each familyconsisting of an adult male with his females and their young, numberingin all some sixty or seventy apes.
Kala was the youngest mate of a male called Tublat, meaning brokennose, and the child she had seen dashed to death was her first; for shewas but nine or ten years old.
Notwithstanding her youth, she was large and powerful--a splendid,clean-limbed animal, with a round, high forehead, which denoted moreintelligence than most of her kind possessed. So, also, she had agreat capacity for mother love and mother sorrow.
But she was still an ape, a huge, fierce, terrible beast of a speciesclosely allied to the gorilla, yet more intelligent; which, with thestrength of their cousin, made her kind the most fearsome of thoseawe-inspiring progenitors of man.
When the tribe saw that Kerchak's rage had ceased they came slowly downfrom their arboreal retreats and pursued again the various occupationswhich he had interrupted.
The young played and frolicked about among the trees and bushes. Someof the adults lay prone upon the soft mat of dead and decayingvegetation which covered the ground, while others turned over pieces offallen branches and clods of earth in search of the small bugs andreptiles which formed a part of their food.
Others, again, searched the surrounding trees for fruit, nuts, smallbirds, and eggs.
They had passed an hour or so thus when Kerchak called them together,and, with a word of command to them to follow him, set off toward thesea.
They traveled for the most part upon the ground, where it was open,following the path of the great elephants whose comings and goingsbreak the only roads through those tangled mazes of bush, vine,creeper, and tree. When they walked it was with a rolling, awkwardmotion, placing the knuckles of their closed hands upon the ground andswinging their ungainly bodies forward.
But when the way was through the lower trees they moved more swiftly,swinging from branch to branch with the agility of their smallercousins, the monkeys. And all the way Kala carried her little deadbaby hugged closely to her breast.
It was shortly after noon when they reached a ridge overlooking thebeach where below them lay the tiny cottage which was Kerchak's goal.
He had seen many of his kind go to their deaths before the loud noisemade by the little black stick in the hands of the strange white apewho lived in that wonderful lair, and Kerchak had made up his brutemind to own that death-dealing contrivance, and to explore the interiorof the mysterious den.
He wanted, very, very much, to feel his teeth sink into the neck of thequeer animal that he had learned to hate and fear, and because of this,he came often with his tribe to reconnoiter, waiting for a time whenthe white ape should be off his guard.
Of late they had quit attacking, or even showing themselves; for everytime they had done so in the past the little stick had roared out itsterrible message of death to some member of the tribe.
Today there was no sign of the man about, and from where they watchedthey could see that the cabin door was open. Slowly, cautiously, andnoiselessly they crept through the jungle toward the little cabin.
There were no growls, no fierce screams of rage--the little black stickhad taught them to come quietly lest they awaken it.
On, on they came until Kerchak himself slunk stealthily to the verydoor and peered within. Behind him were two males, and then Kala,closely straining the little dead form to her breast.
Inside the den they saw the strange white ape lying half across atable, his head buried in his arms; and on the bed lay a figure coveredby a sailcloth, while from a tiny rustic cradle came the plaintivewailing of a babe.
Noiselessly Kerchak entered, crouching for the charge; and then JohnClayton rose with a sudden start and faced them.
The sight that met his eyes must have frozen him with horror, forthere, within the door, stood three great bull apes, while behind themcrowded many more; how many he never knew, for his revolvers werehanging on the far wall beside his rifle, and Kerchak was charging.
When the king ape released the limp form which had been John Clayton,Lord Greystoke, he turned his attention toward the little cradle; butKala was there before him, and when he would have grasped the child shesnatched it herself, and before he could intercept her she had boltedthrough the door and taken refuge in a high tree.
As she took up the little live baby of Alice Clayton she dropped thedead body of her own into the empty cradle; for the wail of the livinghad answered the call of universal motherhood within her wild breastwhich the dead could not still.
High up among the branches of a mighty tree she hugged the shriekinginfant to her bosom, and soon the instinct that was as dominant in thisfierce female as it had been in the breast of his tender and beautifulmother--the instinct of mother love--reached out to the tinyman-child's half-formed understanding, and he became quiet.
Then hunger closed the gap between them, and the son of an English lordand an English lady nursed at the breast of Kala, the great ape.
In the meantime the beasts within the cabin were warily examining thecontents of this strange lair.
Once satisfied that Clayton was dead, Kerchak turned his attention tothe thing which lay upon the bed, covered by a piece of sailcloth.
Gingerly he lifted one corner of the shroud, but when he saw the bodyof the woman beneath he tore the cloth roughly from her form and seizedthe still, white throat in his huge, hairy hands.
A moment he let his fingers sink deep into the cold flesh, and then,realizing that she was already dead, he turned from her, to examine thecontents of the room; nor did he again molest the body of either LadyAlice or Sir John.
The rifle hanging upon the wall caught his first attention; it was forthis strange, death-dealing thunder-stick that he had yearned formonths; but now that it was within his grasp he scarcely had thetemerity to seize it.
Cautiously he approached the thing, ready to flee precipitately shouldit speak in its deep roaring tones, as he had heard it speak before,the last words to those of his kind who, through ignorance or rashness,had attacked the wonderful white ape that had borne it.
Deep in the beast's intelligence was something which assured him thatthe thunder-stick was only dangerous when in the hands of one who couldmanipulate it, but yet it was several minutes ere he could bringhimself to touch it.
Instead, he walked back and forth along the floor before it, turninghis head so that never once did his eyes leave the object of his desire.
Using his long arms as a man uses crutches, and rolling his hugecarcass from side to side with each stride, the great king ape paced toand fro, uttering deep growls, occasionally punctuated with theear-piercing scream, than which there is no more terrifying noise inall the jungle.
Presently he halted before the rifle. Slowly he raised a huge handuntil it almost touched the shining barrel, only to withdraw it oncemore and continue his hurried pacing.
It was as though the great brute by this show of fearlessness, andthrough the medium of his wild voice, was endeavoring to bolster up hiscourage to the point which would permit him to take the rifle in hishand.
Again he stopped, and this time succeeded in forcing his reluctant handto the cold steel, only to snatch it away almost immediately and resumehis restless beat.
Time after time this strange ceremony was repeated, but on eachoccasion with increased confidence, until, finally, the rifle was tornfrom its hook and lay in the grasp of the great brute.
Finding that it harmed him not, Kerchak began to examine it closely.He felt of it from end to end, peered down the black depths of themuzzle, fingered the sights, the breech, the stock, and finally thetrigger.
During all these operations the apes who had entered sat huddled nearthe door watching their chief, while those outside strained and crowdedto catch a glimpse of what transpired within.
Suddenly Kerchak's finger closed upon the trigger. There was adeafening roar in the little room and the apes at and beyond the doorfell over one another in their wild anxiety to escape.
Kerchak was equally frightened, so frightened, in fact, that he quiteforgot to throw aside the author of that fearful noise, but bolted forthe door with it tightly clutched in one hand.
As he passed through the opening, the front sight of the rifle caughtupon the edge of the inswung door with sufficient force to close ittightly after the fleeing ape.
When Kerchak came to a halt a short distance from the cabin anddiscovered that he still held the rifle, he dropped it as he might havedropped a red hot iron, nor did he again attempt to recover it--thenoise was too much for his brute nerves; but he was now quite convincedthat the terrible stick was quite harmless by itself if left alone.
It was an hour before the apes could again bring themselves to approachthe cabin to continue their investigations, and when they finally didso, they found to their chagrin that the door was closed and sosecurely fastened that they could not force it.
The cleverly constructed latch which Clayton had made for the door hadsprung as Kerchak passed out; nor could the apes find means of ingressthrough the heavily barred windows.
After roaming about the vicinity for a short time, they started backfor the deeper forests and the higher land from whence they had come.
Kala had not once come to earth with her little adopted babe, but nowKerchak called to her to descend with the rest, and as there was nonote of anger in his voice she dropped lightly from branch to branchand joined the others on their homeward march.
Those of the apes who attempted to examine Kala's strange baby wererepulsed with bared fangs and low menacing growls, accompanied by wordsof warning from Kala.
When they assured her that they meant the child no harm she permittedthem to come close, but would not allow them to touch her charge.
It was as though she knew that her baby was frail and delicate andfeared lest the rough hands of her fellows might injure the littlething.
Another thing she did, and which made traveling an onerous trial forher. Remembering the death of her own little one, she clungdesperately to the new babe, with one hand, whenever they were upon themarch.
The other young rode upon their mothers' backs; their little armstightly clasping the hairy necks before them, while their legs werelocked beneath their mothers' armpits.
Not so with Kala; she held the small form of the little Lord Greystoketightly to her breast, where the dainty hands clutched the long blackhair which covered that portion of her body. She had seen one childfall from her back to a terrible death, and she would take no furtherchances with this.