The tribe of anthropoids over which Kerchak ruled with an
iron hand and bared fangs, numbered some six or eight families,
each family consisting of an adult male with his females and
their young, numbering in all some sixty or seventy apes.
Kala was the youngest mate of a male called Tublat,
meaning broken nose, and the child she had seen dashed to
death was her first; for she was but nine or ten years old.
Notwithstanding her youth, she was large and powerful--a
splendid, clean-limbed animal, with a round, high forehead,
which denoted more intelligence than most of her kind
possessed. So, also, she had a great capacity for mother love
and mother sorrow.
But she was still an ape, a huge, fierce, terrible beast of a
species closely allied to the gorilla, yet more intelligent;
which, with the strength of their cousin, made her kind the
most fearsome of those awe-inspiring progenitors of man.
When the tribe saw that Kerchak's rage had ceased they
came slowly down from their arboreal retreats and pursued
again the various occupations which he had interrupted.
The young played and frolicked about among the trees and
bushes. Some of the adults lay prone upon the soft mat of
dead and decaying vegetation which covered the ground,
while others turned over pieces of fallen branches and clods
of earth in search of the small bugs and reptiles which
formed a part of their food.
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