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 t
