CHAPTER XXXII.
These words of Sosee, “I must now go back to the Lali,” caused more surprise to the Ammi than her sudden appearance among them had done.
“There is something unfathomable in that girl,” said Pounder. “We undertook this war for her, and now, when we have obtained her, she wants to go back to the enemy. I fear she has been won over to the Apes by flattery, or a new lover, and comes back as a spy. Don’t let her return.”
“I wonder,” observed Koree to himself, “if she really has a new lover.”
“If I do not go back,” she said, “all I have told you will be in vain. If the Lali, who do not yet know that I am here, should learn of my escape, they will attack you at once, suspecting that I have communicated their designs to you; and then all will be lost.”
“If you go,” replied Koree, “all will be lost at any rate—to me.”
And Koree insisted that see should not return.
“I do not believe her story,” said Pounder, “and I insist that we keep our ground and also keep her. Otherwise she may carry back information to the enemy.”
“I think too,” said Koree, “that we should not give up what we came for. If we go back without her our escape will not be worth the making.”
Others thought it best to let her return, so that a dispute arose and finally a quarrel. Koree, however, prevailed; and so, against her will, she was compelled to fall in line and enter the Swamp with the rest.
But though Koree gained her possession he did not gain her consent. She refused to be reconciled to him, and insisted during the retreat that she be allowed to return.
“I know,” said Koree to himself, “that she has another lover. But she will soon forget him, and I will keep her now that I have her. She will be more easily won back to me in my presence than in my absence.”
But Sosee, thus forced to remain, proved an enemy to him rather than a lover.
“I hate you,” she said, “and will never live with you if you do not let me go back.”
“You will never live with me if I do,” he replied.
“I can escape again,” she said, “when we have saved the Ammi, and then I will return to you.”
“If it required so much time and fighting,” he replied, “to get you once, how much will it take to get you again?”
“If I escaped before without your aid, can I not do so again?”
“I am not sure you will want to come back, with all your ape lovers.”
“I shall not want to come back to you, if you do not let me go; but to my mother and Orlee and the rest I will return. If you care for nothing but your love you are unworthy of mine.”
But Koree was determined, and would not let her go.
She thus saw all her unselfish sacrifices about to be defeated by a selfish lover.
The conversation of the Ammi now reverted to the probability of her story and the advisability of their further retreat.
“Let us wait,” said Abroo, after they had gone some distance into the Swamp, “till we see the result of the alliances formed by the Apes.”
“I will wait,” said Pounder, “only on condition that we return and fight them. If what the girl says is true they will soon fall out among themselves, so that even the cowardly need not fear them.”
“What is to be gained by fighting them at all,” asked Oko, “if they have nothing that we want?”
“You greedy beast!” returned Pounder, savagely; “is it nothing to vanquish the Lali? and if all the Monkeys of the forest are collected, is it nothing to whip them all at once? It is base to make this retreat; and I have a notion to smash the jaw of the fellow that proposed it.”
“This is not a retreat,” explained Abroo, calmly, “but a movement to disable the enemy by delay. Weshall be better able to fight when they are less able to coöperate.”
And thus the talk went on for hours, when Koree suddenly interrupted it with the question:
“Where is Sosee?”