iia THE MONKEYFOLK OF SOUTH AFRICA 



of harm's way into crevices in the rocks, but the majority 

 of us were quite defenceless, so our leader gave the order 

 to scatter and escape as best we could. I was scrambling 

 down the rocks, when a heavy body struck and sent me with 

 a bound into the air. I fell with a tremendous thud upon 

 the ground. My thigh struck a boulder, and the pain was 

 terrific. Creeping into a thick bush near by, I lay still. 

 Peering out from my leafy shelter I saw one of our baboon- 

 folk women sitting upon the grass, moaning over her in- 

 fant, which had been either stunned or killed by the fall. 

 It was her body which had collided with me. She had 

 been shot, and losing her hold, she fell. Blood was oozing 

 from her side, and from a terrible scalp wound, caused 

 evidently by a looper ripping the skin and muscles of the 

 head. Just then a man came up, and stood gazing at her. 

 He wasn't one of the farmerfolk, I knew him at once, 

 for I had many a time watched him from behind a boulder 

 driving a pair of horses, in a carriage you call a " spider." 

 He was a doctor man, who did his best to cure people when 

 they got sick. The baboon mother glanced at him, and 

 again crooned over her infant. Blood suddenly gushed 

 out of the wound on her head, and ran down her face. 

 She put her hand to her head, and lowering it, looked 

 mournfully at the blood which smeared her palm. Then 

 she groaned in a terribly heart-rending sort of way, and 

 looked up at the doctor man with an expression of the 

 deepest reproach and sorrow. She repeated this three 

 times. She would look down at the blood upon her hand, 

 then at her senseless infant, and then at the doctor man's 

 face. She didn't speak, but her expression and her actions 

 were understood just as easily. The doctor man covered 

 his face with his hand, and turned away and sobbed. Just 

 then a farmer came up, and I heard the doctor say that 

 this sort of thing was too much like murder for him. He 

 said he couldn't stand it. The mother baboon had looked 



