Читать книгу Kwa and the Ape People - Perley Poore Sheehan - Страница 5

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ONE of the strangest galleries in the world had gathered to see one of the strangest battles in the world.

There was hardly a creature present who didn't know who Sobek was. But who was Kwa? What was Kwa?

Kwa was a word from the universal speech which the Ape People, the Furry Tribe, used when communicating with their friends. The Mu were friends of all animals. The Mu dated from that time in the history--or "pre-history"--of the world when all animals, all things, still lived in peace--united in a certain common understanding.

Kwa was of the sun. Kwa was of the golden light. He was of the earth the sun shines on.

Sobek was of the underworld. He was of the ooze and darkness. He belonged to a world of the time before the sun, before that first great Truce of which the Mu were the only real guardians on earth today.

The Mu never fought. Yet Kwa fought.

"Our fight!"--and that was the elephant whisper, breathing about. "The fight of all of us!"

The elephants were friends of the Mu. Of all the jungle peoples, perhaps, the elephants came closest to living up to the ideals of the Mu. Yet the elephants would fight on occasion.

THE old bull leader of the herd, another Tembo, stood there now on the edge of the jungle clearing at an end of the pool. His great ears were extended to a width equal to his towering height. His tusks gleamed like a pair of sharp new moons.

The rest of the herd clouded about him, half-hidden, half-seen. The tinga-tinga were there--the swamp buffalo; they'd come up like a cavalry charge and were still in movement wanting to do something, but irresolute.

Leopards slinked about. They stopped to spit and slap at each other. But no fight lasted--only that one out there in the middle of the pool.

The Tembo had said it: "Our fight! The fight of all of us!"

For, no matter how men may regard themselves as creatures apart, of a different order, animals have never regarded men as such. Animals have always regarded men as merely one more species in the world of animals--sometimes pleasant, sometimes hellish; willing to accept men on terms of tolerance or even friendship when men show an inclination to do as much.

Kwa was almost drowned. But he'd ridden Sobek through that first wild flurry. Sobek ceased to roll. Instead, he was off on a heaving, zigzag race. Again--and yet again--he was half out of water. He writhed like a speared eel. The muddy lather of the pool was curdled with branches and clots of brush Sobek had carried away with the lashing of his tail.

A black panther grimaced and hissed. That was the smell of blood. There wasn't an animal there--except certain of the birds, perhaps--that didn't know that tragic smell and react to it in a way. The apes, the monkeys, large and small, responded to it as if they'd been touched with a cold breeze. A knot of wild pigs squealed and were off into the jungle; but soon they were back again. The elephants swayed closer. The buffalo held steadier now--staring, straining.

THERE was no telling, at first, whether the blood was that of Kwa or that of Sobek, the common enemy. Only one thing was certain--blood, the smell and taste of the blood, would be stirring the big crocodile now to the last extremity of murderous frenzy.

In ordinary times, in ordinary rivers, just a hint of blood and all the Sobeks for a mile would come streaking in.

Sobek heeled over in a swirl, bringing one of Kwa's legs into sight. It looked as if the leg had been cut to ribbons. Even in that flashing second it could be seen that Sobek, was doing murderous play with those clawed fingers of his. If this went on, Kwa would have no legs left.

The old ape woman chattered from that vine where Kwa himself had swung:

"Kwa! Kwa! Big brother!"

There was hysteria in her voice; yet a certain joy, an unmistakable hope. To all animals death, after all, is merely something incidental to living. The living's the thing. Kwa was still alive.

His position had hardly shifted from the very beginning of the fight. You could see the same muscles straining in his back, the same bulges in his shoulders and upper arms. He rode like a cowboy in a rodeo and the horse he rode was a killer, an outlaw of outlaws.

But then it was seen that his right arm was no longer engaged in merely holding on. With his left hand he still kept his grip on the lethal snout of the big saurian. Not once had Sobek been able to slip that hold, shake itself free. But now with his right hand Kwa was otherwise, engaged. His right arm jerked and jerked again.

Slowly, Sobek was seen to yield his head--fighting, bucking, lashing; but turning up at last the yard-wide pallor of his throat. And only then could the watchers see that the throat was cut, that it was pulsing blood.

In a final flurry, Sobek whipped the pool into a geyser of bloody froth--so thick and high that Kwa completely disappeared. He was gone--for a second, then another, of straining suspense.

While Sobek, meantime, spun in a tightening whirlpool.

It was the small blue kingfisher that discovered Kwa first. Kwa may have been flung for a long dive under water.

IN any case, he'd come up out of sight of most of the gallery. He was still in deep water, but he was close under one of the banks where there was a considerable scour; and where, at the same time, there was a heavy overhang of brush and of broad-leaved creepers.

Kwa was pawing at this growth in an effort to pull himself out and was making poor play at it when the kingfisher set up her racket again. First to Kwa, then up and around, clamoring that help was needed now if it ever was.

As by an inspiration she was drawn to the big Tembo standing there. To the tusker she may have been, at that, like a messenger from some higher plane. The kingfisher flashing about him--scolding him; telling him what to do--the elephant chief lumbered forward into the pool.

The water was deep. It was getting deeper. But the bottom was sound. The elephant bent his trunk at last under Kwa and supported him.

Down at the other end of the pool, by this time, the buffalo were crowded up, pawing and snorting, while they watched that which had been Sobek stranded on a sandbank.

There were already a dozen jack crows--the jungle undertakers--on a nearby snag--

By and by, Kwa found himself seated on the edge of the little river above the pool. He wasn't sure how he'd got there. But there he was, and his scarred legs were in the healing water where they ought to be.

All around him, on both sides of the stream, which was narrow here, he could sense the presence of much company.

Kwa spoke up--in the language of the Ape Men, the Mu.

"Wah!" he said. "I am Kwa. Kwa of the Ape People. Do you know me?"

There was a whisper: "You are Kwa. You are our big brother."