[Illustration]
The plan of attack on the beasts was two-fold. One method was to
associate together and make a combined assault by two’s or more,
according to the strength of their antagonists. The other was to get on
trees and spring upon the enemy when asleep or at other disadvantage. In
this way they hoped to so worry the larger beasts that they would quit
the region of their own accord.
This coöperation was important as being the beginning of association
among Apes. By uniting in two’s and three’s for attack or defense they
learned to confederate, and so laid the foundations of society. Till
that time they had roamed the forests and jungles solitary, each one
hunting alone his food, like the tigers, and forming no lasting or
frequent attachments. They met the opposite sex casually at a spring
or in the fruit regions. They did not recognize their own children, or
care for them except for a few years after birth, until they could roam
for themselves. Only occasionally did they meet for a common purpose,
and then only for a little while. They were not gregarious, though they
sometimes met in large numbers where food was abundant, and became
slightly acquainted. They chattered or fought while together, and then
parted to see one another perhaps no more.
Having now, however, formed a League of the Apes, offensive and
defensive, these animals, who disputed with the tigers the right to be
called the lords of the land, soon became acquainted with one another,
and therefore learned to like each other better. They found that they
had many common interests, and there sprang up warm attachments between
them. Their mutual disagreements disappeared before their disagreements
with the tigers. They learned to help one another that they might destroy
a common enemy, founding their unity on their common hatred. Many
sentiments were, accordingly, developed, to which ape-hood had before
been a stranger. Hearts were touched where before there were thought to
be only stomachs, and a new sentiment—love—was awakened in the race; and
when they parted after a night’s watch, or fight, they often presented
one another with a cocoanut or bull-frog. Unselfishness gradually took
the place of unrestrained competition, and a monkey etiquette grew up and
became recognized. Some of the apes became noticeably polite, especially
to the opposite sex, and there was soon quite a little social intercourse
between them. They would go out by two’s and three’s for food or water,
as well as for a fight, and thus they learned to labor together, as well
as fight together.
Nor was this all. Having got together in a league, it was not easy to
separate them. They came together to stay, and they stayed to co-operate
in many measures besides their own defense. After their wars certain
industries sprang up, among which was the damming of part of the Swamp
(where it was entered by a stream), so as to form a lake, in which they
could with more convenience drink and wash. Having tasted the sweets
of association, they wished, in short, to remain in society; and when
subsequently the younger ones became restive, and tried to regain the
liberty of independent or single life, the older heads compelled them to
adhere to the social compact.
Scarcely had they formed their alliance for war, when they set out for
the enemy. Their chief foe was the tigers and snakes, because these were
most numerous, although there were some lions, pachyderms, bears, and
other savage beasts, of which also they meant to rid the country. One
proposed that they all start out together, saying that while they would
thus be fighting as a whole, the enemy, which would be fighting singly,
could be easily overcome. Shamboo opposed this plan, however, as likely
to attract too much attention, and, perhaps, to cause the tigers also to
confederate. “Let us,” he said, “indeed, fight each enemy singly; but it
does not require more than three apes to kill one tiger.”
They accordingly broke up into small bands, and started on a tiger
hunt. On the first day of the War of the Beasts, a body of three, led
by Shamboo, climbed a Yew tree near the Swamp, where a great tiger was
known to come to slake his thirst. It was agreed, or rather laid down by
Shamboo as the method of attack, that when the tiger should pass under
the tree, one of them, the youngest and strongest, should drop upon the
tiger’s back, and fasten his jaws in his neck, when the rest would follow
and dispatch their victim.
[Illustration: SHAMBOO’S RIDE.]
Scarcely had this been resolved upon, when the tiger appeared, marching
slowly toward their tree. He was carrying a sheep in his mouth, and his
great show of muscular strength and fierce expression seemed to despise
danger. The ape who had been chosen to drop on the tiger drew back in
fear, and told Shamboo to do that part himself.
No time was to be lost, and, before the words of the timid ape were
fully uttered, Shamboo dropped upon the tiger. His great weight crushed
the beast to the ground, and compelled it to let go of the sheep. The
tiger immediately got up, however, and, not knowing what to do, in his
embarrassment, started on a full run. Shamboo clung to his back, and away
they both went, like John Gilpin, dashing over hill and dale and through
jungle and forest. The deer fled at their approach, squirrels ran up the
trees, a flock of ducks started from a pool near by, and the flight of
birds and beasts from their path was like the stampede which precedes a
prairie fire. Shamboo’s teeth were fixed in the tiger’s neck, and his
feet like spurs were sunk in his sides.
So they ran, and the earth rapidly receded behind them. The other two
apes followed, but at a distance, so that the tiger and Shamboo were
practically alone, and must soon, it seemed, try their strength in single
combat. The tiger, however, was too scared to take an inventory of what
he was carrying, while Shamboo’s thoughts were divided equally between
how to hold on and how to let go. The tiger himself soon solved this
problem for Shamboo by running through a hole in a thicket which was too
small to admit both, so that Shamboo was knocked off. He fell into a
cluster of bushes, and the fall was so violent as to cause him to turn
several summersets, so that he did not know in which direction he had
been going. The tiger, lightened of his load, but not of his scare, kept
on, and was soon out of sight and out of this story.
Shamboo picked himself up and, looking round, spied the other two
apes coming slowly toward him. He limped back to them with an air of
disappointment, rather than of suffering, and, without uttering a word,
fell upon the younger ape, who had shown cowardice, and killed him for
his breach of military discipline in disobeying orders.
The fame of that ride and that fight remains to the time of this story,
though there are different versions of it among the Ammi and the Apes
beyond the Swamp.
And long subsequent to this time, when the descendants of these Apes got
to riding on the backs of horses and cattle, there was a legend ascribing
the origin of the uses of beasts of burden to this unwilling ride of
Shamboo; and in the mythology of the later Apes Shamboo became the god of
Domestication.