Others, again, searched the surrounding trees for fruit,
nuts, small birds, and eggs.
They had passed an hour or so thus when Kerchak called
them together, and, with a word of command to them to
follow him, set off toward the sea.
They traveled for the most part upon the ground, where it
was open, following the path of the great elephants whose
comings and goings break the only roads through those
tangled mazes of bush, vine, creeper, and tree. When they
walked it was with a rolling, awkward motion, placing the
knuckles of their closed hands upon the ground and swinging
their ungainly bodies forward.
But when the way was through the lower trees they moved
more swiftly, swinging from branch to branch with the agility
of their smaller cousins, the monkeys. And all the way Kala
carried her little dead baby hugged closely to her breast.
It was shortly after noon when they reached a ridge
overlooking the beach where below them lay the tiny cottage
which was Kerchak's goal.
He had seen many of his kind go to their deaths before the
loud noise made by the little black stick in the hands of the
strange white ape who lived in that wonderful lair, and Kerchak
had made up his brute mind to own that death-dealing
contrivance, and to explore the interior of the mysterious den.
He wanted, very, very much, to feel his teeth sink into the
neck of the queer animal that he had learned to hate and
fear, and because of this, he came often with his tribe to
reconnoiter, waiting for a time when the white ape should be
off his guard.
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