Читать книгу From Monkey to Man, or, Society in the Tertiary Age - Austin Bierbower - Страница 5

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The plan of attack on the beasts was two-fold. One method was to associate together and make a combined assault by two’s or more, according to the strength of their antagonists. The other was to get on trees and spring upon the enemy when asleep or at other disadvantage. In this way they hoped to so worry the larger beasts that they would quit the region of their own accord.

This coöperation was important as being the beginning of association among Apes. By uniting in two’s and three’s for attack or defense they learned to confederate, and so laid the foundations of society. Till that time they had roamed the forests and jungles solitary, each one hunting alone his food, like the tigers, and forming no lasting or frequent attachments. They met the opposite sex casually at a spring or in the fruit regions. They did not recognize their own children, or care for them except for a few years after birth, until they could roam for themselves. Only occasionally did they meet for a common purpose, and then only for a little while. They were not gregarious, though they sometimes met in large numbers where food was abundant, and became slightly acquainted. They chattered or fought while together, and then parted to see one another perhaps no more.

Having now, however, formed a League of the Apes, offensive and defensive, these animals, who disputed with the tigers the right to be called the lords of the land, soon became acquainted with one another, and therefore learned to like each other better. They found that they had many common interests, and there sprang up warm attachments between them. Their mutual disagreements disappeared before their disagreements with the tigers. They learned to help one another that they might destroy a common enemy, founding their unity on their common hatred. Many sentiments were, accordingly, developed, to which ape-hood had before been a stranger. Hearts were touched where before there were thought to be only stomachs, and a new sentiment—love—was awakened in the race; and when they parted after a night’s watch, or fight, they often presented one another with a cocoanut or bull-frog. Unselfishness gradually took the place of unrestrained competition, and a monkey etiquette grew up and became recognized. Some of the apes became noticeably polite, especially to the opposite sex, and there was soon quite a little social intercourse between them. They would go out by two’s and three’s for food or water, as well as for a fight, and thus they learned to labor together, as well as fight together.

Nor was this all. Having got together in a league, it was not easy to separate them. They came together to stay, and they stayed to co-operate in many measures besides their own defense. After their wars certain industries sprang up, among which was the damming of part of the Swamp (where it was entered by a stream), so as to form a lake, in which they could with more convenience drink and wash. Having tasted the sweets of association, they wished, in short, to remain in society; and when subsequently the younger ones became restive, and tried to regain the liberty of independent or single life, the older heads compelled them to adhere to the social compact.

Scarcely had they formed their alliance for war, when they set out for the enemy. Their chief foe was the tigers and snakes, because these were most numerous, although there were some lions, pachyderms, bears, and other savage beasts, of which also they meant to rid the country. One proposed that they all start out together, saying that while they would thus be fighting as a whole, the enemy, which would be fighting singly, could be easily overcome. Shamboo opposed this plan, however, as likely to attract too much attention, and, perhaps, to cause the tigers also to confederate. “Let us,” he said, “indeed, fight each enemy singly; but it does not require more than three apes to kill one tiger.”

They accordingly broke up into small bands, and started on a tiger hunt. On the first day of the War of the Beasts, a body of three, led by Shamboo, climbed a Yew tree near the Swamp, where a great tiger was known to come to slake his thirst. It was agreed, or rather laid down by Shamboo as the method of attack, that when the tiger should pass under the tree, one of them, the youngest and strongest, should drop upon the tiger’s back, and fasten his jaws in his neck, when the rest would follow and dispatch their victim.

SHAMBOO’S RIDE.

Scarcely had this been resolved upon, when the tiger appeared, marching slowly toward their tree. He was carrying a sheep in his mouth, and his great show of muscular strength and fierce expression seemed to despise danger. The ape who had been chosen to drop on the tiger drew back in fear, and told Shamboo to do that part himself.

No time was to be lost, and, before the words of the timid ape were fully uttered, Shamboo dropped upon the tiger. His great weight crushed the beast to the ground, and compelled it to let go of the sheep. The tiger immediately got up, however, and, not knowing what to do, in his embarrassment, started on a full run. Shamboo clung to his back, and away they both went, like John Gilpin, dashing over hill and dale and through jungle and forest. The deer fled at their approach, squirrels ran up the trees, a flock of ducks started from a pool near by, and the flight of birds and beasts from their path was like the stampede which precedes a prairie fire. Shamboo’s teeth were fixed in the tiger’s neck, and his feet like spurs were sunk in his sides.

So they ran, and the earth rapidly receded behind them. The other two apes followed, but at a distance, so that the tiger and Shamboo were practically alone, and must soon, it seemed, try their strength in single combat. The tiger, however, was too scared to take an inventory of what he was carrying, while Shamboo’s thoughts were divided equally between how to hold on and how to let go. The tiger himself soon solved this problem for Shamboo by running through a hole in a thicket which was too small to admit both, so that Shamboo was knocked off. He fell into a cluster of bushes, and the fall was so violent as to cause him to turn several summersets, so that he did not know in which direction he had been going. The tiger, lightened of his load, but not of his scare, kept on, and was soon out of sight and out of this story.

Shamboo picked himself up and, looking round, spied the other two apes coming slowly toward him. He limped back to them with an air of disappointment, rather than of suffering, and, without uttering a word, fell upon the younger ape, who had shown cowardice, and killed him for his breach of military discipline in disobeying orders.

The fame of that ride and that fight remains to the time of this story, though there are different versions of it among the Ammi and the Apes beyond the Swamp.

And long subsequent to this time, when the descendants of these Apes got to riding on the backs of horses and cattle, there was a legend ascribing the origin of the uses of beasts of burden to this unwilling ride of Shamboo; and in the mythology of the later Apes Shamboo became the god of Domestication.