CHAPTER XIVBESET BY ENEMIES
Evenas Bomba drew his arrow to its head he found that he felt a strange unwillingness to inflict injury on this antagonist.
The monkeys were his friends. Often they had helped him when other foes, much more like Bomba in form and appearance, had sought to take his life. He could not forget how the swarm of monkeys had turned the tide of battle in his fight with Nascanora and his braves when they had attacked the cabin.
So Bomba called to this slavering, hideous object in the language of the monkeys, trying to show that he was not an enemy.
But if anything, the aspect of the ape became still more fierce and threatening. It uttered a shrill cry and sprang at the lad with hairy arms outstretched to grasp him.
Ashati and Neram gave a shout of warning, and seeing that their young leader was in grave danger, conquered their fear and sprang to his help.
The bow of the jungle boy sang with a twanging sound as the arrow sped from it. But the attack of the monkey was so swift that the arrow, instead of entering the heart as Bomba had intended, pierced the flank of the brute.
With a howl of pain and rage, the great ape plucked out the arrow, and swung around upon Bomba with the bloody point of the weapon upraised.
But Bomba was quicker than the ape. He sprang aside and, drawing his machete from his belt, struck the animal’s arm a blow that cut deep and caused the blood to spurt into the distorted face of his assailant.
The arrow dropped clattering to the ground, and with a weird and terrible howl the ape swung itself with its uninjured arm into the branches of a tree and vanished into the depths of the jungle.
Trembling, Ashati and Neram faced Bomba in that uncanny twilight. For a while they said nothing, but stood staring solemnly at each other.
It was Bomba who first broke the silence, and in the deep stillness of the shadow-filled jungle his voice sounded hollow in his own ears.
“The mad monkey! If he is alone, all will be well. But if there are others——”
“There are others,” interrupted Ashati. “One mad monkey needs but bite another, and that one too will become mad. It is in that way the evilspirits get possession of a flock of monkeys and set loose a thousand demons upon the jungle.”
“And the bite of one sets loose an evil spirit within ourselves, and we become even as the mad monkeys,” said Neram, his teeth chattering.
Bomba knew that he spoke truly. A kind of hydrophobia would sometimes be communicated by a snake-bitten monkey to its mates, and by them to any human being that came within their reach while the epidemic was raging. He had known of whole flocks of monkeys having been decimated before the terrible disease had run its course. And at such times there was no inhabitant of the jungle to be so much feared as a mad monkey.
“We cannot stay here,” said Bomba, looking about him. “We must go on. Perhaps we shall find shelter, a cave or an abandoned hut of a caboclo, where we can spend the night and leave this terrible place with the daylight.”
“Yes, we must go on,” agreed Ashati, and Neram nodded his head in agreement. “To stay here would be to bring that hurt monkey back for his revenge.”
“With good fortune we may escape the notice of others of the flock, since it is night and they may sleep,” suggested Neram.
“Then we must make no more noise than the foot of the jaguar,” warned Bomba, and, turning,he sped silently and swiftly from the place, followed closely by his companions.
They had proceeded only a short distance when a horrible chattering overhead caused them to look up, and in the branches of a tree they saw two big apes gibbering and grinning at them, with the same awful look in their eyes that had marked the first one they had encountered.
As the little party moved swiftly on, a large castanha nut struck Ashati on the shoulder with such force that he was felled to the ground.
Bomba lifted him to his feet and hurried him onward just as a bombardment of the heavy missiles came pelting down. A hideous wailing and a sharp, crackling sound like a crazy laugh followed the three fugitives as they raced onward.
By this time, superstitious terror had taken complete possession of Ashati and Neram, and Bomba himself could feel the hair rising on his head. The swift-falling darkness, the knowledge that danger was all about them, that insane enemies were skulking perhaps behind a tree, leering at them from branches overhead, crouching in ambush behind a concealing bush or shrub, at any moment to reach out a hairy arm—all these things combined to fill them with terror.
Their flight was unreasoning. They plunged through thorn bushes that tore at their flesh, and felt no pain. They stumbled and fell into blackooze that might hold writhing snakes, and scarcely thought of it. To put distance between themselves and this nightmare became their only aim.
Once a terrible figure dropped upon the neck of Ashati from the branches above. The native gave a dreadful shriek and threw himself upon his face.
The mad beast catapulted from the shoulders of Ashati and fell at the feet of Bomba. It was the work of a moment for the lad to sink his machete to the handle into the hairy body. The thing crouched as though to spring, then gave a ghastly screech and sprawled upon the ground.
“He is dead?” asked Neram, coming forward, unbelieving.
At the words, the prostrate Ashati raised himself on hands and knees and crawled over to where the lifeless brute was lying.
“Dead!” he gasped, and dragging himself to his feet stared hard at Bomba.
For it was a superstition among the natives that a mad creature was possessed of an evil spirit that made it immune to death. The fact then that Bomba had killed one of the mad monkeys so easily filled them with surprise and hope. If he had killed one, he might kill many. Their weapons were not as powerless as they had feared.
But their relief was swiftly changed to fear by a strange, weird rustling among the trees that swelled in volume as they listened, as though agreat storm had entered the jungle and was sweeping all before it. But there was no storm nor sign of one.
“The mad monkeys!” whispered Bomba. “They have told each other that we are here. They know that we are few and they are many. Come!”
If their flight had betrayed panic earlier, it was nothing to the fear that now gave wings to their feet. They might hold their own against a few. They could not face an army, such as, from the sounds, now seemed to be in pursuit of them.
But even then Bomba had no hate against his pursuers, such as he felt toward jaguars and snakes. He pitied them as the suffering victims of a terrible disorder. None the less, he knew that they were bent on taking his life and that if it came to a combat it was a case of kill or be killed.
There was but one hope, and that a slender one; the hope that they might find some cave or other shelter in which they could barricade themselves and hold the maddened animals at bay. He knew of no such place in that vicinity, and even if he had, it would have been difficult to find it in the dark.
Ashati and Neram, with what breath they had, were muttering prayers to the Spirit of the Jungle. If ever help was needed, it was needed then.
Onward they plunged through the black night of the jungle, that terrible rustling as of a mighty wind coming closer and closer with every moment.
As the pursuing monkeys drew closer to their prey, they began to howl and jabber horribly. It seemed to Bomba that the whole jungle was one hideous jangle of sound.
Neram screamed. A hairy arm had reached from a low-hanging branch, encircling his neck. He struck at it with his knife and stumbled after Bomba and Ashati.
They were panting, spent. In another moment that awful swarm of maddened beasts would descend upon them.
Stumbling blindly on, Bomba felt his foot slip into a hollow at the same time that his body struck violently against a hard substance.
He stretched out his hands and felt rather than saw in the darkness that he had come to the entrance of a cave.
“Quick!” he gasped, stepping back and nearly falling over the cowering form of Neram. “Into the cave! Quick!”