CHAPTER XI.
The morning after the quarrel and make-up between Koree and Sosee, these two lovers started out to rescue Orlee from the captivity just mentioned. They tried in vain to induce the Ammi to go out as a body to recapture her, but nearly all except these two had exhausted their strength and their interest the day before. An excitement did not last as long with the Ammi as with their present descendants, and when they were not all interested they were quickly reconciled to an outrage. Koree and Sosee, however, in their first ardor of love, knew no rest, and had not yet learned to despair.
Arming themselves, therefore, with clubs and sharp stones, they started around the Swamp, intending to travel by day and at night to steal upon the camp of the Lali and take the child by some artifice. They kept along the border of the Swamp, and where it was not too deep to wade, cut across its waters. The danger of neither wild beasts nor serpents terrified them. They were together, and were fixed on one purpose. Koreewas willing to die with his Sosee, and Sosee believed she was in no danger with her Koree. So with resignation or confidence they marched on, heedless of a plunging alligator or swinging python which occasionally disturbed the stillness of the Swamp. Occasionally they stopped to gather mussels or climb after nuts; for they did not think it necessary to take provisions with them. The supplies of scouts and armies in those days were light—they foraged on the country. They marched without chart or compass, and yet rarely missed their way; for they had learned to guide themselves by the sun and the lay of the land. If occasionally, in the thick of the forest, they could not get their bearings, they emerged from the swamp to look at the mountains with whose ranges they were familiar.
It was not easy for primitive man to get lost, and it did not much matter if he was lost. Wherever he placed his foot he was at home, carrying his citizenship with him. Everywhere around were his possessions—the ungathered fruits and fish and game. Everywhere were his friends—the chance baboon or man that he might meet. Only recently, with the association which we mentioned, had there sprung up attachments for individuals. Before that their love was for the race, and anyone represented that race about equally well, as in the case of dogs. Even since they had come to associate, their attachments were not permanent; and they relied much on chance-comers for their society. Should they, therefore, be lost, they would not feel that they were among strangers, any more than that they were away from home.
“If we do not find Orlee will we go back?” asked Koree.
“We will not go back till we find her,” replied Sosee.
“We could live nicely in this forest,” said he; “there is plenty of food, and we need no company.”
“When we find Orlee,” she replied, “we will have company.”
“Two is company,” said he, “and when we find her and take her to her mother, shall we not come here to live?”
“Let us first find her,” she persisted; “we can then decide what to do next.”
“There is nothing that we can lack here,” mused Koree; “a forest and a swamp include all human desires;” and then, after a pause, he added, “and Sosee.”
“And Orlee,” interposed Sosee.
“Love in a cottage” was long antedated by “love in a forest.” A sycamore tree was cottage enough for our first parents.
“O! O! O! O!” ejaculated Sosee, too frightened to say more, as she suddenly ran up a tree.
“Oo! Oo! Oo! Oo!” shrieked Koree, as he ran up another tree.
The cause of this sudden fright was a huge mammoth which slowly lifted itself from a clump of bushes and walked toward the lovers. A great hairy elephant, twice as large as those now existing, with long front legs, carrying his bushy body high up in the air, and a back gradually sloping to the ground, like a giraffe—such was the monster that confronted them.
KOREE AND SOSEE ENCOUNTER A MONSTER.
KOREE AND SOSEE ENCOUNTER A MONSTER.
Sosee had run up a slim sapling which this beast could easily have torn up with his trunk, or from which he could have shaken her down like a cocoanut; while Koree had run up a tree stout enough, indeed, to resist uprooting or shaking, but so low that the monster could easily have reached him with his long trunk. Their safety lay, therefore, in their silence, and they were accordingly quiet,—quiet even for lovers.
The mammoth was in no hurry to leave the place. He browsed about slowly, picking up bunches of grass, or reaching after leaves. Once he picked a trunk full of leaves from the tree in which Koree was sitting; but he took no notice of Koree, whether because he did not see him, or because he did not care for him. Koree and Sosee alone were concerned,—not the pachyderm. They remained simply quiet, and left the great beast in undisputed possession of the field. Never were two lovers more cruelly interrupted, and never did an unwelcome intruder stay so long.
“Two is company,” said Koree to himself, “and three is a great big crowd.”
The lovers could neither touch nor speak.
“Would that our trees were nearer,” whispered Koree.
“Or stouter,” replied Sosee.
“Or taller,” returned Koree.
“Never did I think,” muttered Sosee, “that anything so great could come between our love.”
“Ugh!” shuddered they both.
The huge beast kept on eating, unconscious that he was a bore.
“I wonder when that brute will get enough,” muttered Sosee in impatience.
“If he is going to fill all that big carcass,” replied Koree, “we are up here for all day.”
“Our only hope is that the leaves of these trees will give out,” replied she, “so that he must go elsewhere to finish his dinner.”
“Or that he will want to take something to drink with his meal,” replied Koree, “and so go to the Swamp to wet his snout.”
These breathings of the lovers were unnoticed by the monster, who took them for whisperings of the wind, and went on leisurely eating.
“Never did I see such an appetite,” said Sosee.
“Or one so contented with its dinner,” added Koree.
“I don’t like this seat,” grumbled Sosee, “I wish we were on the same tree.”
“I neither want to sit up here,” returned Koree, “nor get down.”
“I’m hungry,” said Sosee, after a long pause. “Never did I sit so long at a meal, and not eat anything.”
“If this meal of the brute goes on much longer,” said Koree, “we will both starve, or else be eaten.”
Just then, to the inexpressible relief of the tired, hungry and bored lovers, the animal showed signs of satiety. He quit eating, looked around with an air of satisfaction, stretched himself, and made a start, as if about to leave the place. Their gratification, however, was short. He walked around a few steps, and then, totheir dismay, lay down under the tree on which Koree was perched, and disposed himself for an afternoon nap.
Koree looked at Sosee, and was silent.
Sosee returned the look, but was too disgusted and empty for utterance.
“If that beast sleeps as long as he eats,” she said, “we will get neither supper nor slumber to night.”
“We will, however,” returned Koree, “be safe; for neither ape nor snake will attack us with such a watch at our door. So one danger wards off another.”
They were now reconciling themselves to spend the balance of the day, and perhaps the night, in this situation, and also to add to their weariness, hunger and disgust, the additional discomforts of sleeplessness and danger. For as Sosee had never slept on a tree (the Ammi having come to the ground before her birth), it was feared that, although her feet were still prehensile, and served her well in climbing, they might fail her from lack of practice when it came to holding to a limb when asleep. Koree determined not to sleep under these circumstances, both because he could not trust himself on a tree when asleep, and because he wanted to watch Sosee in order to rescue her from the mammoth in case she should fall. Love up a tree was thus faithful to the last.
While they were making their preparations for a continued disappointment, however, an accident, which at first seemed disastrous, came happily to their relief. Koree, in restlessly changing his position, fell off the tree, and came down with a thump on the back of the mammoth.
Whether Koree or the monster was more frightened we know not. Koree, however, was uninjured, the great beast breaking his fall, for the huge back of the animal reached, when lying down, well up toward the branches on which Koree was sitting. Sosee was, perhaps, the most frightened of all, as one is often most scared at the danger of another; and she gave a scream which the animal hearing, believed, in connection with the thump on his back, to be caused by some other animal that was attacking him.
He started from his sleep and his position at once, and, without looking for the cause of danger, rushed through the forest, while Koree ran up another tree and waited till the brute was at a safe distance. Then both he and Sosee came down, and returned thanks to the great Shoozoo for their deliverance.