But as Ilo fought for his one love, and Oboo for one of many, Ilo was successful, though he had not fought so often, or won so many victories as Oboo. He accordingly took possession of Sosee, and, crowned with two triumphs, hoped to enjoy her forever.
But Oboo, being defeated, next resolved, in his double loss of honor and lover, to effect her destruction. Whom he could not win he would kill. This was more, however, from hatred of Ilo than anger at Sosee. He could not endure that another should take a woman, especially from him; and so he demanded her death as a punishment to Ilo, though ostensibly for treachery to the whole. Joining, therefore, in a conspiracy with one whom he had recently joined in a fight, he proposed to Hang-from-the-vines that they kill her whom he had just rescued from death.
But Hang-from-the-vines was now in a changed mood, being unwilling to gratify his recent enemy even by his own success.
“As you would not let me slay her,” he said, “you shall perpetuate your victory as a defeat, and see her another’s. Preventing her death when she was false to all, you shall not get me to kill her now because she is false only to you.”
Oboo, however, was resolved on her death, at least for the moment, and he easily enlisted others in his design. Oola wanted her to die because she had won from her the affections of Oboo (which many others, however, had since obtained). Other women desired her death because she had been their rival for several lovers, and still others merely because she was pretty and popular; so that, between her charms and her offenses, she was in double peril. All, however, urged as a pretext for her death, not their real reason, but the excuse of her treachery; so that the public welfare had to bear the odium of their private jealously. Only those having no interest in her death—the great masses—wanted it on the ground which all alleged.
Her death, however, was ordered, and she was brought for execution before the assembled Apes. Several were impatient to tear her to pieces. Oola, fearing that others, by dispatching her, would deprive her of a coveted revenge, made a pass at her, but was restrained by a male ape who had begun to feel an attachment for her. A further delay was caused by a priest who insisted on sprinkling the scene with Swamp water, which, like the return of the ship from Delos, required time, during which, like Socrates, she could still live.
SOSEE’S STRATEGY.