Chapter VIII
The Tree-top Hunter
The morning after the Dum-Dum the tribe started slowly back through the forest toward the coast.
The body of Tublat lay where it had fallen, for the people of Kerchak do not eat their own dead.
The march was but a leisurely search for food. Cabbage palm and gray plum, pisang and scitamine they found in abundance, with wild pineapple, and occasionally small mammals, birds, eggs, reptiles, and insects. The nuts they cracked between their powerful jaws, or, if too hard, broke by pounding between stones.
Once old Sabor, crossing their path, sent them scurrying to the safety of the higher branches, for if she respected their number and their sharp fangs, they on their part held her cruel and mighty ferocity in equal esteem.
Upon a low-hanging branch sat Ta
