[Illustration]
When Koree returned with his charge to the Ammi, these were engaged in
one of their sports, which consisted in throwing cocoanuts, and the rush
of all to get them, much as their descendants now play football. Some
of the younger ones amused themselves by racing up and down the trees
trying to catch one another, and occasionally shaking each other from
the branches. One little girl had caught a skunk which she was trying to
feed with figs, to the great disgust of the skunk. All had apparently
forgotten the absent ones; for the memory of our first ancestors was
short, not having yet been exercised on history.
“I told you to drop that skunk,” said an old woman, “and had you minded
me you would not now be sneezing and spitting so violently. Go down to
the spring and wash yourself.”
Just then a cocoanut flying through the air, struck the woman in the
eye, and for a moment she did not know whether it was the odor from the
skunk, or a ball from the players that knocked her down.
“I told you to be careful with your cocoanuts,” she said, “and had you
minded me you would not get this shaking;” at which she seized the
nearest player by the hair and administered several pulls and scratches.
Finally Koree made his appearance, leading Orlee by the hand. His first
anxiety was to know whether Sosee had returned, whom he was alarmed not
to see among the players. The mother of Orlee ran franticly to receive
her child, which she fondled with an incoherent chattering.
“Where is Sosee?” asked Koree.
“Where is Sosee?” asked the mother at the same time.
Both looked at each other in amazement, and no words were needed to
express their mutual disappointment.
“Have you restored to me one child only to lose another?” asked the
mother reproachfully.
“Have I lost a lover,” replied Koree, “only to rescue a baby?”
Both, forgetful of what they had, were about to quarrel over what they
had not. Koree, however, was the more inconsolable, because he had lost
all that he went for, which he had, indeed, before starting, and went
to retain rather than to acquire. For he went for Sosee rather than for
Orlee, seeking the latter only that he might not lose the former.
“Wait,” said Gimbo, the grandfather of Sosee, “and she may yet return.
She is doubtless in the swamp detained by some attraction or difficulty.”
“Sosee, unincumbered and swift of foot,” replied Koree, “would not
be longer in returning than I with the child. She has either been
re-captured by the Lali, or else met with a disaster in the swamp.
Perhaps the lion I saw chasing the tapirs devoured her;” and he grieved
like Pyramus mourning for Thisbe.
Little did he think that at that moment she was the cause of a quarrel
between Oboo and Ilo in the far off land of the Lali. The mother was less
concerned, both because she was in the first joys of receiving a restored
child, and because, in addition to the uncertainty as to whether Sosee
would not return, it was not customary for our ancestors of that day
to concern themselves about their grown children. When their offspring
had passed the disabilities of infancy, they were allowed to shift for
themselves. Orlee, being still a child, was, therefore, dearer to the
mother than Sosee; and so, measurably content with the former, she was
willing to trust the other to her lover or herself.
When Koree, however, became satisfied that Sosee was lost, he resolved
to find her; and, as his fears early persuaded him that she was lost
(since fear acts faster in the absence and confidence in the presence of
lovers,) he resolved at once to get up an expedition for her recapture.
To set all doubt at rest about her whereabouts, some neutral monkeys, who
had recently visited the Lali in a migration southward, now came to the
Ammi. They informed the latter that the chief talk among the Lali was
about the capture of a beautiful girl, and the quarrel of two apes over
her possession. They said also that they heard it intimated among the
Lali, that as the girls of the Ammi were more beautiful than those of the
Lali, they had a project to capture more of them.
Armed with this information and these threats, Koree now went about to
rouse the infant race of men to arms. Rumor went before him, and that
which had been a hint soon became an assertion. Horrid tales of captured
maidens filled the imaginations of Cocoanut Hill. The young women were
especially interested, some hoping they would escape capture, and others
that they would not. The old men and women were indifferent, especially
as babies were not to be captured. But the young men were easily aroused,
especially those who had lovers, and they determined to defend their own.
A league was, therefore, entered into by the young men of the Ammi, which
the older men soon after joined, to proceed, like the united princes of
Greece, to recapture the stolen maiden and restore her to this earlier
Menelaus. Another and older siege of Troy was thus planned, which, like
many battles greater than Homer’s, was lost to history, and can now be
restored only by meager relics saved from the past.
Let us then proceed, Homer-like, to build up the history of this war,
as the mammoth has been rebuilt by putting together here and there a
bone, and as Roman history has been constructed by inspecting coins and
broken statues. Greater battles are lost than any that are retained in
history. The greatest throes of earth and of its inhabitants have escaped
even tradition, and are now to be exhumed only from the forgotten.
We dig up history as we do potatoes, and wonder that so much activity
has been buried. History is now built from this end, and long periods
of forgetfulness are being reclaimed. Like the bridges which span the
Mississippi, we throw up great highways across prehistoric periods, and
prospect in times and lands beyond the known.