THE CLOUD OF VULTURES
Bomba dropped to the ground and waited.
In a moment the monkeys were upon him, dropping from the branches and
surrounding him, crowding against him, howling and jabbering all at
once.
Bomba drew one red-faced old ape aside. It was the leader of the
swarm.
“Tatuc, ba?” asked Bomba, meaning in monkey language, “Tatuc, what is
wrong?”
In the jabbering monosyllable chatter, which Bomba from years of
intimacy and observation had come to understand sufficiently to get
its essential meaning, Tatuc gave the boy the news that his flock had
been attacked by a swarm of vultures while trying to defend two of
their young that the voracious birds had swooped down upon, with the
intention of carrying them off to their retreats, where they could
devour them at leisure.
The resistance had infuriated the birds, who were coming in numbers.
And the monkeys, timid folk at best except when they were cornered,
had come to Bomba for help.
Even as Bomba gathered this from Tatuc’s chattering, a sinister
whirring of wings sounded and a cloud of the birds of prey swept down
through and under the trees.
Except when attacked or thwarted of their prey, the vultures rarely
attack living creatures, preferring to feast in safety and at leisure
upon carrion.
But when the latter is scarce, they do not hesitate to swoop down
upon lambs or other small game and carry them off. In this instance
the young monkeys had been tempting bait, and the attempt of the
mothers to defend their offspring had aroused the ferocity of the
vultures, never far from the surface, and had prompted this wholesale
raid in reprisal.
Against these creatures the monkeys had little defense. They could
only fly from them, and quick as they were, the wings of the great
birds were swifter.
Now the monkeys crowded close to Bomba, chattering and howling,
begging for his protection. He had power. Had they not seen the
jaguar slink away from him? Why should he not also disperse the
vultures?
As the black pursuing crowd of vultures came closer, Bomba reached
for the revolver, balancing it in his strong brown fingers. The
expression of his mouth was grim, but in his heart was already coming
the delight of battle.
Again that feeling of power swept over him. In all his contests with
bird or beast or reptile of the jungle he had never faced them with
such a sense of mastery as now. The revolver, gift of the white men,
made all the difference—that deadly little toy from the mouth of
which spurted fire and death.
As the ominous cloud swept closer, thickening overhead, Bomba set his
sturdy brown legs wide apart and fired into the midst of it.
The friendly monkeys at first were more scared by the report than by
the attacking vultures. They shrank away from Bomba, screaming more
wildly than before. What had happened? Was their best friend turning
against them?
But Bomba shouted to them reassuringly and again shot into the swarm
of vultures.
Two of them fell with a great flapping of wings into the underbrush,
while a third, one wing drooping, blundered off through the trees.
The attack was halted. Bewildered by the noise of the shots and the
spurts of flame, as well as by the fall of some of their number, the
great birds fluttered about uncertainly, beating the air with their
wings and filling the air with raucous squawks.
The respite, however, was only temporary. The assailants swooped down
again, with wicked claws outstretched and cruel curved beaks ready
for action.
One of them darted forward and seized a baby monkey, tearing it
from the mother’s arms. A long agonized howl came from the bereaved
female. She sprang into the air and clutched wildly at the tiny
helpless bundle in the claws of the vulture.
The great wide-spread wings of the attackers were so close that Bomba
was fanned by them. He shielded his eyes instinctively with one arm
against the rip of beak and claw. With the other hand he slowly
raised the revolver, trained it upon the vulture with the baby monkey
in its talons, tightened his finger on the trigger and fired.
The shot struck no vital part, because Bomba had feared to injure the
little captive. But he succeeded in breaking the wing of the vulture.
With a shrill squeak it dropped its prey, and with its uninjured wing
flapping clumsily, disappeared above the trees.
The mother monkey leaped forward, seized her baby, hugged it to her
breast and crouched low above it, interposing her body between it and
danger.
The vultures returned to the attack with redoubled fury. The
opposition they encountered served only to enrage them the more. They
came in smothering masses, and there ensued a fight that Bomba never
forgot.
The monkeys, brought to bay, fought viciously for their lives. But
without the aid of Bomba the odds would have been too much for them.
And even the boy, armed with his new death-dealing weapon, had need
of all his strength and agility to withstand the attack of the
predatory birds.
He fought them off as well as he could, wielding his machete with his
left hand, shooting when he could, carpeting the ground about him
with dead or wounded birds.
But always they came on. There seemed no end of them. His flesh was
scratched and torn in a dozen places where powerful wing or beak had
raked him.
A hurried glance told him that his friends, the monkeys were
suffering horribly. The dead were piled in heaps. Several vultures
had seized upon living prey and were making their way toward their
home fastnesses.
Raging, Bomba continued to shoot until the cartridges in the weapon
were exhausted and the ominous click without a report told him the
fire stick needed reloading. He dared not take time for this.
But he still had his bow and arrows and he dropped the revolver and
machete and had recourse to those primitive weapons.
Primitive they might be, but in his hands they were deadly. Every
time his bow twanged the arrow found its mark. At such close quarters
the missile went clear through the body of his target, protruding
from the farther side.
It was characteristic of the boy that he never thought of flight.
At any moment he could have found refuge in one of the many dense
thickets of the vicinity that no bird could penetrate. There he could
have waited in perfect security until the fight was over and the
raiders had dispersed.
But an ingrained sense of loyalty to his tree-living friends made
even the thought impossible. They had come to him. They were fighting
against terrible odds. They relied on him to help them. Would he
desert them in their extremity, forfeit the confidence they had in
him? Not while breath remained in his body.
It seemed as though that breath were not going to remain very much
longer. He could scarcely draw air into his bursting lungs. His chest
seemed bound with iron bands. His strength was deserting him. He was
fairly trembling with fatigue.
But his indomitable will was as strong as ever. He had a wild
Berserker rage against these fiendish, ferocious enemies from the
air, these pirates of the ether. For every wound he got from beak or
talon he was determined to exact a death in return.
But his arrows would soon be gone. Then it would come to a
hand-to-hand fight with the machete. But that weapon was only
effective when wielded by a strong hand. He might strike with it,
wound with it, but in his present wearied state he could not kill.
And when it should drop from his paralyzed hand—But Bomba would not
allow himself to think of what would happen after that.
Now his last arrow was really gone, and the vultures seemed more
numerous than ever. Reinforcements had come to their depleted ranks.
Bomba stooped over and picked up his machete. But to his dismay he
found that he could not lift it above his head. His numbed muscles
had rebelled at last and refused to obey his will.
Then suddenly, mysteriously, the heavy cloud lifted. Bomba heard the
whirring of wings in retreat. He looked up. The vultures had gathered
as though in obedience to a signal and were winging their way above
the trees.
For a moment the jungle boy did not know what to make of the sudden
flight of his enemies. From his place on the ground he could not
know what had startled the vultures.
Then he heard the cries and whimperings of the monkeys.
At the same time Bomba heard the rushing of wind through the jungle.
It came with a roar like that of surf pounding upon the shore.
“The great wind!” cried Bomba, and raised his bleeding arms toward
the sky.