At the end of half an hour Nimba was still spitting at him and still clubbing the wall with unabated energy.
“Oomba go! Oomba go! Me you will not touch!” she screamed at intervals.
Finally Oomba climbed back to the top of the rock—but he did not give up. He pulled the great creeper up after him. He would trap the little spit-cat, he thought, and so tame her.
But he did not know Nimba.
As soon as the object of her hatred became lost to sight Nimba calmed herself. When she saw her rope of escape withdrawn she waited for some time in silence. Then she stepped to the edge of her cave home—and her body flashed forward through the sunlit air like a gleam of gold. For fifty feet the gleam curved, then struck the water silently like a knife. Fifteen yards from where she struck, Nimba’s face appeared above the surface glancing upward toward the top of the rock.
Oomba peering over the rock, witnessed Nimba’s mighty dive. For a moment he scowled at her before dashing into the bushes just as Nimba swam into shallow water.
NIMBA rose near the shore, her club dripping in her hand. She bounded along the rough shore line, keeping at least ankle deep in the water. Rounding a small, wooded point, she came to an overhanging bough upon which she climbed.
Here she broke two or three small branches and sped on into the next tree and the next, throwing herself from limb to limb and breaking small branches in her flight. Finally she broke a very small branch and leaped into a densely foliaged tree without so much as crushing a leaf. And here she ensconced herself from sight.
Her trap was laid. She clung to a limb as silent and watchful as any animal of prey, her long club between her young body and the bark on which she lay.