144 THE MONKEYFOLK OF SOUTH AFRICA 



had all the time been lying stretched along a great branch 

 overhead, and was watching us with his half-closed greenish- 

 yellow eyes. But so it was. With a thud his great body 

 fell in the midst of us. With a double sweep right and 

 left, he stunned or maimed three of us, and seized another 

 in his jaws. It was useless to tackle him. We were power- 

 less against such an enemy ; so we sprang into the trees and 

 chattered and yelled, and made fierce faces, hoping against 

 hope to frighten him off. He heeded us not, but deliber- 

 ately crushed the neck bones of his victims. We sat there, 

 high up in the branches of a yellow-wood tree and watched 

 him eat up two of our folk. Picking up two more he carried 

 them off just like a cat carries her kittens. We followed 

 at a distance and saw him climb up a large tree, and when 

 he got about twenty feet from the ground he placed the 

 bodies of our poor murdered friends in a fork. Climbing 

 a little higher he stretched himself along a big branch and 

 dozed. 



We held a great council meeting that evening and 

 decided to leave our home in that forest and seek another, 

 for now that the leopard had found us out we should have 

 been hunted at all times. 



MANY OTHER ENEMIES 



We have a great number of enemies, and it is no wonder 

 we are so suspicious and so watchful. We never know 

 the moment that from some hole, cleft, or bush, an enemy 

 may pounce out and kill one or more of us. With all our 

 cleverness we are often outwitted. The great African 

 python, which grows to twenty feet long, lies still as death 

 stretched along a branch, ready at any moment to drop 

 down upon or lunge out at one of us. Once seized by 

 his curved teeth, there is no hope for us, for in the fractioii 

 of a second his huge coils are around his victim, 



