CHAPTER XIV
BESET BY ENEMIES
Even as Bomba drew his arrow to its head he found that he felt a strange unwillingness to inflict injury on this antagonist.
The monkeys were his friends. Often they had helped him when other foes, much more like Bomba in form and appearance, had sought to take his life. He could not forget how the swarm of monkeys had turned the tide of battle in his fight with Nascanora and his braves when they had attacked the cabin.
So Bomba called to this slavering, hideous object in the language of the monkeys, trying to show that he was not an enemy.
But if anything, the aspect of the ape became still more fierce and threatening. It uttered a shrill cry and sprang at the lad with hairy arms outstretched to grasp him.
Ashati and Neram gave a shout of warning, and seeing that their young leader was in grave danger, conquered their fear and sprang to his help.
The bow of the jungle boy sang with a twanging sound as the arrow sped from it. But the attack of the monkey was so swift that the arrow, instead of entering the heart as Bomba had intended, pierced the flank of the brute.
With a howl of pain and rage, the great ape plucked out the arrow, and swung around upon Bomba with the bloody point of the weapon upraised.
But Bomba was quicker than the ape. He sprang aside and, drawing his machete from his belt, struck the animal’s arm a blow that cut deep and caused the blood to spurt into the distorted face of his assailant.
The arrow dropped clattering to the ground, and with a weird and terrible howl the ape swung itself with its uninjured arm into the branches of a tree and vanished into the depths of the jungle.