CHAPTER XVI.
When Koree returned with his charge to the Ammi, these were engaged in one of their sports, which consisted in throwing cocoanuts, and the rush of all to get them, much as their descendants now play football. Some of the younger ones amused themselves by racing up and down the trees trying to catch one another, and occasionally shaking each other from the branches. One little girl had caught a skunk which she was trying to feed with figs, to the great disgust of the skunk. All had apparently forgotten the absent ones; for the memory of our first ancestors was short, not having yet been exercised on history.
“I told you to drop that skunk,” said an old woman, “and had you minded me you would not now be sneezing and spitting so violently. Go down to the spring and wash yourself.”
Just then a cocoanut flying through the air, struck the woman in the eye, and for a moment she did not knowwhether it was the odor from the skunk, or a ball from the players that knocked her down.
“I told you to be careful with your cocoanuts,” she said, “and had you minded me you would not get this shaking;” at which she seized the nearest player by the hair and administered several pulls and scratches.
Finally Koree made his appearance, leading Orlee by the hand. His first anxiety was to know whether Sosee had returned, whom he was alarmed not to see among the players. The mother of Orlee ran franticly to receive her child, which she fondled with an incoherent chattering.
“Where is Sosee?” asked Koree.
“Where is Sosee?” asked the mother at the same time.
Both looked at each other in amazement, and no words were needed to express their mutual disappointment.
“Have you restored to me one child only to lose another?” asked the mother reproachfully.
“Have I lost a lover,” replied Koree, “only to rescue a baby?”
Both, forgetful of what they had, were about to quarrel over what they had not. Koree, however, was the more inconsolable, because he had lost all that he went for, which he had, indeed, before starting, and went to retain rather than to acquire. For he went for Sosee rather than for Orlee, seeking the latter only that he might not lose the former.
“Wait,” said Gimbo, the grandfather of Sosee, “and she may yet return. She is doubtless in the swamp detained by some attraction or difficulty.”
“Sosee, unincumbered and swift of foot,” replied Koree, “would not be longer in returning than I with the child. She has either been re-captured by the Lali, or else met with a disaster in the swamp. Perhaps the lion I saw chasing the tapirs devoured her;” and he grieved like Pyramus mourning for Thisbe.
Little did he think that at that moment she was the cause of a quarrel between Oboo and Ilo in the far off land of the Lali. The mother was less concerned, both because she was in the first joys of receiving a restored child, and because, in addition to the uncertainty as to whether Sosee would not return, it was not customary for our ancestors of that day to concern themselves about their grown children. When their offspring had passed the disabilities of infancy, they were allowed to shift for themselves. Orlee, being still a child, was, therefore, dearer to the mother than Sosee; and so, measurably content with the former, she was willing to trust the other to her lover or herself.
When Koree, however, became satisfied that Sosee was lost, he resolved to find her; and, as his fears early persuaded him that she was lost (since fear acts faster in the absence and confidence in the presence of lovers,) he resolved at once to get up an expedition for her recapture.
To set all doubt at rest about her whereabouts, some neutral monkeys, who had recently visited the Lali in a migration southward, now came to the Ammi. They informed the latter that the chief talk among the Lali was about the capture of a beautiful girl, and the quarrel of two apes over her possession. They said also thatthey heard it intimated among the Lali, that as the girls of the Ammi were more beautiful than those of the Lali, they had a project to capture more of them.
Armed with this information and these threats, Koree now went about to rouse the infant race of men to arms. Rumor went before him, and that which had been a hint soon became an assertion. Horrid tales of captured maidens filled the imaginations of Cocoanut Hill. The young women were especially interested, some hoping they would escape capture, and others that they would not. The old men and women were indifferent, especially as babies were not to be captured. But the young men were easily aroused, especially those who had lovers, and they determined to defend their own.
A league was, therefore, entered into by the young men of the Ammi, which the older men soon after joined, to proceed, like the united princes of Greece, to recapture the stolen maiden and restore her to this earlier Menelaus. Another and older siege of Troy was thus planned, which, like many battles greater than Homer’s, was lost to history, and can now be restored only by meager relics saved from the past.
Let us then proceed, Homer-like, to build up the history of this war, as the mammoth has been rebuilt by putting together here and there a bone, and as Roman history has been constructed by inspecting coins and broken statues. Greater battles are lost than any that are retained in history. The greatest throes of earth and of its inhabitants have escaped even tradition, and are now to be exhumed only from the forgotten.We dig up history as we do potatoes, and wonder that so much activity has been buried. History is now built from this end, and long periods of forgetfulness are being reclaimed. Like the bridges which span the Mississippi, we throw up great highways across prehistoric periods, and prospect in times and lands beyond the known.