[Illustration]
The first impulse of the Ammi, on recovering their safety and their
senses, was to kill Fire-tamer who was thought responsible for the
disaster. He was supposed to know the habits of the beast, and was deemed
negligent in allowing them to be exposed to such a calamity. Pounder
especially favored his death, and proposed to inflict it himself, as he
had been twice submerged that day, and was specially out of humor.
“I knew,” said Gimbo, “that it would come to this; but you never take the
advice of an old man. I don’t walk on four feet for nothing.”
What had become of the beast, was the next question.
“Shall we go after it?” asked one.
Another said: “Let us rather run away from it, and kill Fire-tamer if he
brings another.”
“It would be a good thing to have,” said Koree, “now that we are so cold
and wet.”
“As soon as it should dry us,” replied Pounder, “it would plunge us again
in the water.”
Fire-tamer was puzzled, and it was well that he had nothing to say; for
the Ammi were not in a condition to listen to him. He and his beast were
alike in disfavor, and so he waited for a cold day for his vindication.
The Ammi proceeded on their way, but were terribly afflicted with the
cold, which kept steadily increasing. Their feet and hands suffered
most, for which they had as yet provided no covering. Walking through
the snow and on the ice they had frequently frozen feet. Osa, a young
and pretty girl, admired by many, was completely overcome, and fell back
in the march to die. Aloo, her lover, sought means of taking her along;
but, after carrying her awhile in his arms, and enlisting others to aid
him, he gave up exhausted, but stayed with her while the rest moved
on, resolved to die also. As nothing more has been heard of them it is
believed that they perished together.
As the Ammi marched forward, they heard dreadful reports from the Apes
which they met, of the cold of the north. The whole country was covered
with snow; the rivers were frozen; the trees were dead; the animals had
left the country, or were perishing; great mountains of ice had formed
in the valleys; all fruit had disappeared, and the roots were under the
snow and could not be dug out of the hard ground. In the famine which
accompanied this change animals fell to eating one another, not only the
dead but the living, so that when the survivors reached the south they
were much thinned out.
“It is foolish,” said Oko, on hearing these reports, “to go back to fight
the Lali. Let us rather return home, gather up what is left, and go south
also.”
“Not till Sosee is recovered,” said Koree. “Neither Cold, nor Snow, nor
Famine shall make us desist from war. I mean to march through all these
to where she is, and to take her from the Lali even though they fight
twice as hard as the Storm.”
“She has, no doubt, left long since with some lover among the Lali, and
is now in the south,” replied Oko.
This was a more dreadful thought to Koree than that she should be
perishing in the north. He accordingly gave a savage look and growl at
Oko, and replied:
“Whether she be in the snows or in the arms of a lover, I shall rescue
her.”
He accordingly urged the army to quicken its pace, although to do so,
they had to leave many perishing ones to die. He feared more that they
would not find the Lali than they would, and so hurried to overtake those
whom he had shortly before hurried to escape from.
Watch-the-girls opposed this excessive speed, on account of the many
females in her charge who could not keep up, and whom she was unwilling
to abandon in the snow.
“If we go so fast,” she said, “we will have no forces left when we reach
the Lali, and will have to fight them with our leaders only.”
“I can whip them all myself,” said Pounder, who was eager for the fight,
and thought little of those who perished, whether of the enemy or of his
own people.
Koree, too, urged them to quicker speed, lest the battle, the Lali and
Sosee should all escape, and they themselves should be compelled to
return without glory or the girl. “If I must go south”, he said, “I want
the company of Sosee, and if I must die in the cold, I want to die with
her.”
And so his tenderness for one became cruelty to many; and he led the
forces hastily to the seat of war, while the girls and the weak fell
back, unable to keep up. Watch-the-girls fell back with them, though
abundantly able to go on. She said she would die with her charge, or else
bring them up to the front later on.
And so some remained behind suffering, while others went forward
suffering. Watch-the-girls was equally divided in her attentions between
caring for the dying and getting forward the living.