ADORATION SCORNED
Nothing was fresher nor keener than I when again the sun touched the
tips of the trees. Asleep one second as soundly as a hibernating
squirrel, I was as sharply awake the next as a ferret in a coop. I shook
myself and stretched.
“Great Scott!” I exclaimed, “that was a nap!”
Swinging down from my berth I ate of the food which was still on the
ground, where the bear had neglected it quite, and then taking my
bearings as best I could, from memory of my imaginary map of the lake, I
struck off through the jungle for “home.”
Of the hours which it took me to force my way between tangles and around
a marsh and over hills and down dales, to accomplish what I thought to
be something like two miles on an air line, I have anything but pleasant
recollections. That I met with many creatures, flocks of parrots and a
troop of apes and monkeys; that I recoiled from a path in which a huge
boa-constrictor was gliding, and that I cursed my luck repeatedly for
ever having landed in such a place, is all a matter of small account,
compared to the fact that I stood at last on a hill and saw our very
camp. I came to it then in less than one more hour of hottest work and
travel.
An excited yell announced my approach before I had walked ten feet on
the slope of our hill. If the Links had been enthusiastic on the morning
after my night with the tiger, they were crazy and flabbergasted all at
once on this occasion. The whole population came tumbling and running
down the slope. They were worse than a pack of great, rough dogs that
nearly knock one endways with delight. They made me fairly wild, the
idiotic things, for my patience was gone to the winds, after my struggle
to win through the jungle, and besides, it was they who had plunged me
into all the trouble. I batted them off with rare satisfaction and
punched a couple of heads in the bargain, but the fools were more
tickled than ever, though I would wager that some of them smarted.
They fell all over one another as they crowded me up the hill, but my
temper rather rose than lowered, for I began to pile my accumulated
grievances up against them. I wanted the whole outfit to understand that
I thought them cowards, for running from a noise, that day in the woods,
and that I now owed nothing to any one in the tribe for my whole skin
and presence once more in “My village.”
When I arrived inside the walls I was made decidedly more angry to find
that Grin had stolen the tiger-skull off my shelter to fasten it up on
the one in which he slept at night, and also by the fact that every
blessed arrow we owned had been shot away by the fellows, as a lot of
inconsequent boys might have done, merely to see them fly and to meddle
with the bows. These bows, by the way, were strewn about on the ground
where everyone kicked them carelessly and walked on them with utter
unconcern.
It took me about one minute to exhibit a bit of temper that scared the
creatures so thoroughly that all but Fatty jumped smartly away and stood
at a distance, eyeing me painfully, ready to fall dead, if such act
could calm me down. Fatty had hastily and exultantly jerked the tiger
relic off from Grin’s abode and fetched it over to mine, after which the
old idiot clung to me patiently through rain of blows and kicks, content
to receive any amount of punishment, but wholly unwilling to leave the
region of my feet. I believe he would have smiled affectionately up in
my face and refused to run away if I had raised my knife to kill him on
the spot.
“You Grin, there,” I snorted in my wrath, “if ever I catch you in
another of your beastly, treacherous tricks, I’ll rip you in two and
beat the pieces on a rock!”
The females, seeing in a moment that the fawner was the chief object of
my anger, and cordially hating the fellow in the bargain, pinched him
and struck him and bit him on the shoulders till he was constrained to
run away to preserve his miserable hide. Had they killed him at once I
confess I should have been delighted to witness the deed.
I moved about, with Fatty, in the fine large circle which the troubled
but respectful Links maintained, while I drank some water and ate up a
mango which was left in one of the baskets. This was evidently taken as
a favourable sign, for immediately old and young, male and female made a
great demonstration of procuring me anything and everything that Link or
Link-governor could possibly desire to eat, in hopes of propitiating the
demon of temper which they readily comprehended was raging within me.