[Illustration]
Oboo, hearing there was a fight for girls, now came forward to take part.
He had till now sulked in the rear, because of Ilo’s good fortune in
possessing Sosee. Defeated in love, and still smarting from his wounds,
he had refused, like Achilles, to fight, and, nursing his wrath afar off,
desired the defeat of the Lali. He had long insisted that Sosee should be
restored to the Ammi, and the war ended. But, as others continued it, he
persisted in his absence, even when the Lali were in danger of rout and
their possessions of loss. Many had fallen on account of his inaction.
Oft did the chiefs approach him to assuage his wrath. But the volcanic
fires in his breast refused to be cooled, and awaited their time to burst
out and destroy his rivals. An ape will not waste himself on an enemy
when he has a rival for his anger.
But hearing that there was to be a capture of girls, his anger melted
into lust, and he relented. What neither the North Wind nor the Rain
could do the warmth within him sufficed to accomplish—it moved his
mighty will. For dread War, stalking over the land and breathing his hot
breath in his face, had failed to arouse him. Mightier Reason, borne on
the tongue of Pity, could not move him. Even Glory had no allurements to
draw him from his retreat. But Beauty, which now visited him in fancies,
tickled him into action; and, like the needle following the invisible
pole, he went, strongly impelled, to the scene of battle, where to his
thoughts a field was pictured with delights.
Rumor went abroad, and everywhere proclaimed to the female Apes that the
great Oboo was coming to battle, and many hearts beat at the prospect of
beholding him. Young women and maidens came to see, nor did the old stay
away. Many who had an interest in him past, present or future, sought to
look on; and those who could not be moved by love came from curiosity.
With majestic step their hero advanced. Not as the common warrior comes
came he forth. Slowly like the Morning, he advanced to the eyes of a
wondering world. A female ape had parted his locks in the morning and
picked the burrs from his shaggy limbs; and, as he stood out against the
sky, his form was a monument of beauty to both the women and himself.
Looking to one side and then to the other, (not to reconnoitre, but to
receive the admiration of the females) he reflected, as he shook his
slender legs, that they who now beheld him with solicitude would receive
him back with gratitude. Victory seemed assured in his bearing, and, like
the sun at noon, he dazzled the hosts with his splendor.
Such was the appearance of the mighty Oboo on entering the field; and as
he advanced the eastern zephyrs moved through his louse-less locks, and
his brow, like the forest-crowned head of Mt. Ida, seemed glorified.
Him seeing from afar the great Boomboo, calling all the Gods to his aid,
ran forth to meet. “O Shoozoo,” he cried, “lend me all the heavens with
their fires and loud thunders to match this terror of the plains, the
wrath-inflamed fighter of men and lover of women; and to-night I will
devote to you a live dragon fly caught where the thistles of the Swamp do
bloom and the bats are sleeping.”
So saying he seized a big water-melon, such as two men of our day could
not lift, and he raised it in mid air. It was a melon which had grown on
the sandy banks of Alligator Swamp; three generations had eaten fruit
from that spot, and cast the seeds along the wide-reaching shore. This
great water-melon the mighty Boomboo smashed on the head of Oboo. For,
throwing it with great force, he sent it heavily through the air, as when
a huge rock is thrown convulsively from a volcano. A great flying terror
it went, casting a moving shadow over the earth; and it went not in vain;
but, descending from its flight, it struck the well-picked head of Oboo,
and dreadful was the sound of the thud.
Bursting with a quake, as when the earth opens, it was scattered in
countless pieces, never to be again united. Pulp and rind and seeds were
splattered over his brow and well-smoothed locks, and the juice ran down
over his face, and covered his hairy chest, and flowed from his limbs
to the ground. Dripping and sticky the proud Oboo, like a half-drowned
rat crawling out of a well, sneaked away, unfit to be seen, and would no
longer match his prowess against the Ammi in battle.
[Illustration: THE RETREAT OF THE LALI.]
Inextinguishable laughter arose among the men; while even among
the Lali there was merriment. The females were most amused at the
seed-besplattered lover; and Ilo, glad in his heart at his inglorious
retreat, said with contempt:
“Go back to the women and get dried up; you were made not for war, but
for love.”
Like a bubble blown by a boy, which swells bigger and bigger, until the
sky and mountains are reflected in it, and then, at the moment of its
greatest bulk, when it seems to carry the whole world, bursts and settles
into a little suds, so the swelling Oboo, who matched the sun in its
splendor when he came to battle, dwindled to a sop as he returned.
Meanwhile the girls who had been drawn into the battle, and for whom Oboo
had left his retreat, fought so fiercely that none of them were captured,
but many of their assailants were slain or left wounded on the field.
And now all the Lali retreated from the victorious Ammi, being
demoralized by the victory of the girls and the discomfiture of Oboo,
while the Ammi prepared to move with all their force on the Lali and to
end the war that day.
But Night settled down on the contending armies, and the wheels of
history stopped awhile.