Chapter IV. The Apes

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

　　In the forest of the table-land a mile back from the oceanold Kerchak the Ape was on a rampage of rage among his people.

　　The younger and lighter members of his tribe scampered tothe higher branches of the great trees to escape his wrath;risking their lives upon branches that scarce supported theirweight rather than face old Kerchak in one of his fits ofuncontrolled anger.

　　The other males scattered in all directions, but not beforethe infuriated brute had felt the vertebra of one snap betweenhis great, foaming jaws.

　　A luckless young female slipped from an insecure holdupon a high branch and came crashing to the ground almostat Kerchak's feet.

　　With a wild scream he was upon her, tearing a great piecefrom her side with his mighty teeth, and striking her viciouslyupon her head and shoulders with a broken tree limb untilher skull was crushed to a jelly.

　　And then he spied Kala, who, returning from a search forfood with her young babe, was ignorant of the state of themighty male's temper until suddenly the shrill warnings ofher fellows caused her to scamper madly for safety.

　　But Kerchak was close upon her, so close that he had almostgrasped her ankle had she not made a furious leap far intospace from one tree to another--a perilous chance whichapes seldom if ever take, unless so closely pursued by dangerthat there is no alternative.

　　She made the leap successfully, but as she grasped the limbof the further tree the sudden jar loosened the hold of thetiny babe where it clung frantically to her neck, and she sawthe little thing hurled, turning and twisting, to the groundthirty feet below.

　　With a low cry of dismay Kala rushed headlong to its side,thoughtless now of the danger from Kerchak; but when shegathered the wee, mangled form to her bosom life had left it.

　　With low moans, she sat cuddling the body to her; nor didKerchak attempt to molest her. With the death of the babe hisfit of demoniacal rage passed as suddenly as it had seized him.

　　Kerchak was a huge king ape, weighing perhaps three hundredand fifty pounds. His forehead was extremely low and receding,his eyes bloodshot, small and close set to his coarse, flatnose; his ears large and thin, but smaller than most of his kind.

　　His awful temper and his mighty strength made him supremeamong the little tribe into which he had been born sometwenty years before.

　　Now that he was in his prime, there was no simian in all themighty forest through which he roved that dared contest hisright to rule, nor did the other and larger animals molest him.

　　Old Tantor, the elephant, alone of all the wild savage life,feared him not--and he alone did Kerchak fear. When Tantortrumpeted, the great ape scurried with his fellows highamong the trees of the second terrace.

　　The tribe of anthropoids over which Kerchak ruled with aniron hand and bared fangs, numbered some six or eight families,each family consisting of an adult male with his females andtheir young, numbering in all some sixty or seventy apes.

　　Kala was the youngest mate of a male called Tublat,meaning broken nose, and the child she had seen dashed todeath was her first; for she was but nine or ten years old.

　　Notwithstanding her youth, she was large and powerful--asplendid, clean-limbed animal, with a round, high forehead,which denoted more intelligence than most of her kindpossessed. So, also, she had a great capacity for mother loveand mother sorrow.

　　But she was still an ape, a huge, fierce, terrible beast of aspecies closely allied to the gorilla, yet more intelligent;which, with the strength of their cousin, made her kind themost fearsome of those awe-inspiring progenitors of man.

　　When the tribe saw that Kerchak's rage had ceased theycame slowly down from their arboreal retreats and pursuedagain the various occupations which he had interrupted.

　　The young played and frolicked about among the trees andbushes. Some of the adults lay prone upon the soft mat ofdead and decaying vegetation which covered the ground,while others turned over pieces of fallen branches and clodsof earth in search of the small bugs and reptiles whichformed a part of their food.

　　Others, again, searched the surrounding trees for fruit,nuts, small birds, and eggs.

　　They had passed an hour or so thus when Kerchak calledthem together, and, with a word of command to them tofollow him, set off toward the sea.

　　They traveled for the most part upon the ground, where itwas open, following the path of the great elephants whosecomings and goings break the only roads through thosetangled mazes of bush, vine, creeper, and tree. When theywalked it was with a rolling, awkward motion, placing theknuckles of their closed hands upon the ground and swingingtheir ungainly bodies forward.

　　But when the way was through the lower trees they movedmore swiftly, swinging from branch to branch with the agilityof their smaller cousins, the monkeys. And all the way Kalacarried her little dead baby hugged closely to her breast.

　　It was shortly after noon when they reached a ridgeoverlooking the beach where below them lay the tiny cottagewhich was Kerchak's goal.

　　He had seen many of his kind go to their deaths before theloud noise made by the little black stick in the hands of thestrange white ape who lived in that wonderful lair, and Kerchakhad made up his brute mind to own that death-dealingcontrivance, and to explore the interior of the mysterious den.

　　He wanted, very, very much, to feel his teeth sink into theneck of the queer animal that he had learned to hate andfear, and because of this, he came often with his tribe toreconnoiter, waiting for a time when the white ape should beoff his guard.

　　Of late they had quit attacking, or even showing themselves;for every time they had done so in the past the littlestick had roared out its terrible message of death to somemember of the tribe.

　　Today there was no sign of the man about, and fromwhere they watched they could see that the cabin door wasopen. Slowly, cautiously, and noiselessly they crept throughthe jungle toward the little cabin.

　　There were no growls, no fierce screams of rage--the littleblack stick had taught them to come quietly lest they awaken it.

　　On, on they came until Kerchak himself slunk stealthily to thevery door and peered within. Behind him were two males, andthen Kala, closely straining the little dead form to her breast.

　　Inside the den they saw the strange white ape lying halfacross a table, his head buried in his arms; and on the bedlay a figure covered by a sailcloth, while from a tiny rusticcradle came the plaintive wailing of a babe.

　　Noiselessly Kerchak entered, crouching for the charge; andthen John Clayton rose with a sudden start and faced them.

　　The sight that met his eyes must have frozen him with horror,for there, within the door, stood three great bull apes,while behind them crowded many more; how many he neverknew, for his revolvers were hanging on the far wall besidehis rifle, and Kerchak was charging.

　　When the king ape released the limp form which had beenJohn Clayton, Lord Greystoke, he turned his attention towardthe little cradle; but Kala was there before him, andwhen he would have grasped the child she snatched it herself,and before he could intercept her she had bolted through thedoor and taken refuge in a high tree.

　　As she took up the little live baby of Alice Clayton shedropped the dead body of her own into the empty cradle; forthe wail of the living had answered the call of universalmotherhood within her wild breast which the dead could not still.

　　High up among the branches of a mighty tree she huggedthe shrieking infant to her bosom, and soon the instinct thatwas as dominant in this fierce female as it had been in thebreast of his tender and beautiful mother--the instinct ofmother love--reached out to the tiny man-child's half-formedunderstanding, and he became quiet.

　　Then hunger closed the gap between them, and the son ofan English lord and an English lady nursed at the breast ofKala, the great ape.

　　In the meantime the beasts within the cabin were warilyexamining the contents of this strange lair.

　　Once satisfied that Clayton was dead, Kerchak turned hisattention to the thing which lay upon the bed, covered by apiece of sailcloth.

　　Gingerly he lifted one corner of the shroud, but when hesaw the body of the woman beneath he tore the cloth roughlyfrom her form and seized the still, white throat in his huge,hairy hands.

　　A moment he let his fingers sink deep into the cold flesh,and then, realizing that she was already dead, he turned fromher, to examine the contents of the room; nor did he againmolest the body of either Lady Alice or Sir John.

　　The rifle hanging upon the wall caught his first attention; itwas for this strange, death-dealing thunder-stick that he hadyearned for months; but now that it was within his grasp hescarcely had the temerity to seize it.

　　Cautiously he approached the thing, ready to fleeprecipitately should it speak in its deep roaring tones,as he had heard it speak before, the last words to thoseof his kind who, through ignorance or rashness, had attackedthe wonderful white ape that had borne it.

　　Deep in the beast's intelligence was something which assuredhim that the thunder-stick was only dangerous when in thehands of one who could manipulate it, but yet it was severalminutes ere he could bring himself to touch it.

　　Instead, he walked back and forth along the floor before it,turning his head so that never once did his eyes leave theobject of his desire.

　　Using his long arms as a man uses crutches, and rolling hishuge carcass from side to side with each stride, the great kingape paced to and fro, uttering deep growls, occasionallypunctuated with the ear-piercing scream, than which there isno more terrifying noise in all the jungle.

　　Presently he halted before the rifle. Slowly he raised ahuge hand until it almost touched the shining barrel, only towithdraw it once more and continue his hurried pacing.

　　It was as though the great brute by this show of fearlessness,and through the medium of his wild voice, was endeavoringto bolster up his courage to the point which would permithim to take the rifle in his hand.

　　Again he stopped, and this time succeeded in forcing hisreluctant hand to the cold steel, only to snatch it away almostimmediately and resume his restless beat.

　　Time after time this strange ceremony was repeated, but on eachoccasion with increased confidence, until, finally, the riflewas torn from its hook and lay in the grasp of the great brute.

　　Finding that it harmed him not, Kerchak began to examineit closely. He felt of it from end to end, peered down theblack depths of the muzzle, fingered the sights, the breech,the stock, and finally the trigger.

　　During all these operations the apes who had entered sathuddled near the door watching their chief, while those outsidestrained and crowded to catch a glimpse of what transpired within.

　　Suddenly Kerchak's finger closed upon the trigger. There wasa deafening roar in the little room and the apes at and beyondthe door fell over one another in their wild anxiety to escape.

　　Kerchak was equally frightened, so frightened, in fact, that hequite forgot to throw aside the author of that fearful noise,but bolted for the door with it tightly clutched in one hand.

　　As he passed through the opening, the front sight of therifle caught upon the edge of the inswung door with sufficientforce to close it tightly after the fleeing ape.

　　When Kerchak came to a halt a short distance from the cabinand discovered that he still held the rifle, he dropped itas he might have dropped a red hot iron, nor did he againattempt to recover it--the noise was too much for his brutenerves; but he was now quite convinced that the terrible stickwas quite harmless by itself if left alone.

　　It was an hour before the apes could again bring themselvesto approach the cabin to continue their investigations,and when they finally did so, they found to their chagrin thatthe door was closed and so securely fastened that they couldnot force it.

　　The cleverly constructed latch which Clayton had made forthe door had sprung as Kerchak passed out; nor could theapes find means of ingress through the heavily barred windows.

　　After roaming about the vicinity for a short time, theystarted back for the deeper forests and the higher land fromwhence they had come.

　　Kala had not once come to earth with her little adoptedbabe, but now Kerchak called to her to descend with the rest,and as there was no note of anger in his voice she droppedlightly from branch to branch and joined the others on theirhomeward march.

　　Those of the apes who attempted to examine Kala'sstrange baby were repulsed with bared fangs and lowmenacing growls, accompanied by words of warning from Kala.

　　When they assured her that they meant the child no harmshe permitted them to come close, but would not allow themto touch her charge.

　　It was as though she knew that her baby was frail and delicateand feared lest the rough hands of her fellows might injurethe little thing.

　　Another thing she did, and which made traveling an oneroustrial for her. Remembering the death of her own littleone, she clung desperately to the new babe, with one hand,whenever they were upon the march.

　　The other young rode upon their mothers' backs; their littlearms tightly clasping the hairy necks before them, whiletheir legs were locked beneath their mothers' armpits.

　　Not so with Kala; she held the small form of the littleLord Greystoke tightly to her breast, where the dainty handsclutched the long black hair which covered that portion ofher body. She had seen one child fall from her back to aterrible death, and she would take no further chances with this.