Bomba the jungle boy

Bomba dropped to the ground and waited.

In a moment the monkeys were upon him, dropping from the branches and surrounding him, crowding against him, howling and jabbering all at once.

Bomba drew one red-faced old ape aside. It was the leader of the swarm.

“Tatuc, ba?” asked Bomba, meaning in monkey language, “Tatuc, what is wrong?”

In the jabbering monosyllable chatter, which Bomba from years of intimacy and observation had come to understand sufficiently to get its essential meaning, Tatuc gave the boy the news that his flock had been attacked by a swarm of vultures while trying to defend two of their young that the voracious birds had swooped down upon, with the intention of carrying them off to their retreats, where they could devour them at leisure.

The resistance had infuriated the birds, who were coming in numbers. And the monkeys, timid folk at best except when they were cornered, had come to Bomba for help.

Even as Bomba gathered this from Tatuc’s chattering, a sinister whirring of wings sounded and a cloud of the birds of prey swept down through and under the trees.

Except when attacked or thwarted of their prey, the vultures rarely attack living creatures, preferring to feast in safety and at leisure upon carrion.

But when the latter is scarce, they do not hesitate to swoop down upon lambs or other small game and carry them off. In this instance the young monkeys had been tempting bait, and the attempt of the mothers to defend their offspring had aroused the ferocity of the vultures, never far from the surface, and had prompted this wholesale raid in reprisal.

Against these creatures the monkeys had little defense. They could only fly from them, and quick as they were, the wings of the great birds were swifter.

Now the monkeys crowded close to Bomba, chattering and howling, begging for his protection. He had power. Had they not seen the jaguar slink away from him? Why should he not also disperse the vultures?

As the black pursuing crowd of vultures came closer, Bomba reached for the revolver, balancing it in his strong brown fingers. The expression of his mouth was grim, but in his heart was already coming the delight of battle.

Again that feeling of power swept over him. In all his contests with bird or beast or reptile of the jungle he had never faced them with such a sense of mastery as now. The revolver, gift of the white men, made all the difference—that deadly little toy from the mouth of which spurted fire and death.

As the ominous cloud swept closer, thickening overhead, Bomba set his sturdy brown legs wide apart and fired into the midst of it.

The friendly monkeys at first were more scared by the report than by the attacking vultures. They shrank away from Bomba, screaming more wildly than before. What had happened? Was their best friend turning against them?

But Bomba shouted to them reassuringly and again shot into the swarm of vultures.

Two of them fell with a great flapping of wings into the underbrush, while a third, one wing drooping, blundered off through the trees.

The attack was halted. Bewildered by the noise of the shots and the spurts of flame, as well as by the fall of some of their number, the great birds fluttered about uncertainly, beating the air with their wings and filling the air with raucous squawks.

The respite, however, was only temporary. The assailants swooped down again, with wicked claws outstretched and cruel curved beaks ready for action.

One of them darted forward and seized a baby monkey, tearing it from the mother’s arms. A long agonized howl came from the bereaved female. She sprang into the air and clutched wildly at the tiny helpless bundle in the claws of the vulture.

The great wide-spread wings of the attackers were so close that Bomba was fanned by them. He shielded his eyes instinctively with one arm against the rip of beak and claw. With the other hand he slowly raised the revolver, trained it upon the vulture with the baby monkey in its talons, tightened his finger on the trigger and fired.

The shot struck no vital part, because Bomba had feared to injure the little captive. But he succeeded in breaking the wing of the vulture. With a shrill squeak it dropped its prey, and with its uninjured wing flapping clumsily, disappeared above the trees.

The mother monkey leaped forward, seized her baby, hugged it to her breast and crouched low above it, interposing her body between it and danger.

The vultures returned to the attack with redoubled fury. The opposition they encountered served only to enrage them the more. They came in smothering masses, and there ensued a fight that Bomba never forgot.

The monkeys, brought to bay, fought viciously for their lives. But without the aid of Bomba the odds would have been too much for them. And even the boy, armed with his new death-dealing weapon, had need of all his strength and agility to withstand the attack of the predatory birds.

He fought them off as well as he could, wielding his machete with his left hand, shooting when he could, carpeting the ground about him with dead or wounded birds.

But always they came on. There seemed no end of them. His flesh was scratched and torn in a dozen places where powerful wing or beak had raked him.

A hurried glance told him that his friends, the monkeys were suffering horribly. The dead were piled in heaps. Several vultures had seized upon living prey and were making their way toward their home fastnesses.

Raging, Bomba continued to shoot until the cartridges in the weapon were exhausted and the ominous click without a report told him the fire stick needed reloading. He dared not take time for this.

But he still had his bow and arrows and he dropped the revolver and machete and had recourse to those primitive weapons.

Primitive they might be, but in his hands they were deadly. Every time his bow twanged the arrow found its mark. At such close quarters the missile went clear through the body of his target, protruding from the farther side.

It was characteristic of the boy that he never thought of flight. At any moment he could have found refuge in one of the many dense thickets of the vicinity that no bird could penetrate. There he could have waited in perfect security until the fight was over and the raiders had dispersed.

But an ingrained sense of loyalty to his tree-living friends made even the thought impossible. They had come to him. They were fighting against terrible odds. They relied on him to help them. Would he desert them in their extremity, forfeit the confidence they had in him? Not while breath remained in his body.

It seemed as though that breath were not going to remain very much longer. He could scarcely draw air into his bursting lungs. His chest seemed bound with iron bands. His strength was deserting him. He was fairly trembling with fatigue.

But his indomitable will was as strong as ever. He had a wild Berserker rage against these fiendish, ferocious enemies from the air, these pirates of the ether. For every wound he got from beak or talon he was determined to exact a death in return.

But his arrows would soon be gone. Then it would come to a hand-to-hand fight with the machete. But that weapon was only effective when wielded by a strong hand. He might strike with it, wound with it, but in his present wearied state he could not kill. And when it should drop from his paralyzed hand—But Bomba would not allow himself to think of what would happen after that.

Now his last arrow was really gone, and the vultures seemed more numerous than ever. Reinforcements had come to their depleted ranks.

Bomba stooped over and picked up his machete. But to his dismay he found that he could not lift it above his head. His numbed muscles had rebelled at last and refused to obey his will.

Then suddenly, mysteriously, the heavy cloud lifted. Bomba heard the whirring of wings in retreat. He looked up. The vultures had gathered as though in obedience to a signal and were winging their way above the trees.

For a moment the jungle boy did not know what to make of the sudden flight of his enemies. From his place on the ground he could not know what had startled the vultures.

Then he heard the cries and whimperings of the monkeys.

At the same time Bomba heard the rushing of wind through the jungle. It came with a roar like that of surf pounding upon the shore.

“The great wind!” cried Bomba, and raised his bleeding arms toward the sky.