Ever after she returned from seeking her mother, Charlie eyed the
woods like a frightened child, and vehemently plumped for
civilisation. No wonder! Death is ever at hand for all beings; but in
the woods it seems to press upon you. The very tigers have a recurring
prospect of death by starvation, a fact which should mitigate our
hatred of them, while confirming our hostility. The Lilliputian tribe
of gibbons have lively days, quite full of trouble. They are so human,
and yet so much weaker than humanity, struggling to save their
carcasses from leopards and Christians by sheer agility and
co-operation, living from hand to mouth, picking from the bushes what
they can, where any bush may hide a mortal enemy.
I had noticed among the hills that one heard nothing of them at
nights; and, watching Charlie's ways, I soon saw why. Having found a
cozy corner for herself in the eaves, at the expense of the pigeons,
she retired to it at dark, as regularly as Shakespeare's ploughman.
She, "with a body filled and vacant mind, got her to rest, ... never
saw horrid night, the child of Hell, slept in Elysium...."
She detested lamps more than Ruskin did steam-engines. He sometimes
went in trains. She would have nothing to do with lamps. She--went to
bed. Vain was it to light her roost and offer fruit of the most
attractive quality. You could set the cocks a-crowing with your
artificial dawn; but Charlie knew too much. She lifted her head, and
that was all. She looked at you a second or two, blinking sleepily;
and turned to rest again. We are children of the light, the apes and
we, no less than children of the air; and Charlie would not quit her
sleeping place until the sun relit the world.
Then she rose and came into our room for fruit. In a country near the
Equator, like Lower Burma, sunrise and sunset fall between five and
seven o'clock all the year round; and Charlie's hours differed little
from those of the villagers. So she came in with the dawn and the
morning coffee; but, at that early hour, she would take nothing but
fruit, perhaps because she was in a hurry to go out of doors. She did
not even give us her company while she was eating. Fruit in hand, she
toddled out and away.
She always toddled on the floor, like a child, when she went slowly;
but her usual gait was a light run, such as they now practise in some
Continental armies, as the least fatiguing way for infantry to cover
the ground at times, especially going downhill. You bend forward
a little (how much, depends on your centre of gravity), and trot,
trot, trot, never straightening the legs. I saw the crew of
H.M.S. _Devastation_ running about in that way, during some manœuvres
in the seventies, and heard men talking of it as "a way we have in the
navy, keeps the boys awake, we never walk." So I would have claimed
the discovery for the British navy, when a foreign doctor claimed to
have invented it, if I had not known that both had been forestalled
long ago by the little apes.
Necessity had doubtless been the mother of invention for them, as it
is so often for us. These little creatures dare not walk in the woods,
as men and big apes can do. When on the ground they have to run for
their lives, at the top of their speed. Up in the trees they are safe
from a tiger, and even from a leopard, as a rule, if they see him. But
on the ground there is no beast needs do them reverence. The smallest
adult jungle dog could singly kill the sturdiest of gibbons. That was
why Charlie had learned from her mother to trot like a man-of-war's
man on any flat surface.
When I paid a morning visit to the stable, she often met me there. She
had not walked across the compound; but from some high tree had
noticed me and come whirling down. I have seen her rub her hand upon
the pony's rock-salt, and then put it to her lips and look at me
making various inviting sounds, as if to say, "Try this; it's not at
all bad." At other times, like a child, she put grain between her
teeth and crunched it. I think I have seen her spit it out; but cannot
remember seeing her swallow it.
She would accompany me as far as the gate, I on the ground, she up
aloft, and rather quicker for the short distance; but she stopped at
the edge of the compound, looking timidly at the woods on the farther
side of the road, and never venturing beyond the fence.
Towards eight o'clock, I was told, she was generally among the trees
near the gate, where she had a view of the roads by which I would
return; but it was not a matter of personal affection. Whenever she
saw me in the distance, she knew that breakfast would be ready in half
an hour, and hastened indoors to look round, having a fine youthful
appetite, freshened by exercise. Her business-like, straight return
journey was considered so safe a sign that I was in sight that the
cook believed her rather than the clock. The explanation was that
breakfast was required at an irregular time, between nine and ten, but
regularly about half an hour after my return. So Charlie was
pronounced "really useful."