For this matinee performance, the chimpanzee had put on an old jacket of unknown provenance and, for lack of a silk top hat, was coiffed in a carefully-polished tin can. Thus accoutered, Ko-Zu strummed the strings of his instrument frantically, mimicking what were doubtless the expressions of Mabel’s features.
In is observatory, Gorden heard Miss Smith burst out laughing—and her gaiety infected the entire audience. The delighted Ouha picked up a banana and bit it in half, throwing the rest to the chimpanzee, who caught it and started nibbling it, without ceasing his grimaces and contortions. When the morsel was finished, there was further applause. Ko-Zu stood up, took off his hat, brushing it with is elbow as if to smooth the nap, and bowed all round.
The enthusiasm knew no further bounds then, and that enthusiasm undoubtedly overexciting the orangs, for there were gestures behind Ouha that displeased him. Seizing his scepter, placed beside him, he distributed a few blows to the right and left among his courtiers. That was the signal to withdraw. The assembly retired, and only the usual inhabitants of the cave remained: Ouha and his wives.
LX. Jupiter and Semele
Ouha turned to Mabel then, and seemed to interrogate her with his gaze. He made a gesture; Dilou, Rava and the two she-apes withdrew in their turn. And for the first time, Forden saw Mabel come into view.
Miss Smith, the billionaire’s daughter, was almost naked; the ragged debris of a delicate slip, secured at the waist by lianas, scarcely masked her lower abdomen.
With one bound Ouha was beside her, and seized her in his arms.
Seated on a large flat mossy stone that served them as a divan, the lovers clasped two hands, while the other two wandered, stroking their legs; the enchantment of spring gleamed in their eyes, while vegetal seeds danced in the sunlight, seeking their gyneacea, pollen escaped from the stamens of anthers, in quest of pistils in the folly of April.
An amorous desire communed in their conjoined gazes. The mighty orangutan had taken hold of Mabel Smith, holding her seated on the moss, and titled her back in the clutch of his right arm, with her quivering hair in his lap, contemplating more ardently than white, feminine, ideal, divine flesh.
Doubtless finding that the residue of the fine transparent slip, held at the waist by lianas, was a sacrilege, in hiding a fraction of the most secret, coveted beauty, the ape tore the vestige away, and his hand covered the regal flower—and the young American billionairess, curling up, abandoning herself to pleasure, half-closed her eyelids in order better to savor the sensations.
In spite of the horror born of the unaccustomed nature of such a spectacle, did Gorden find a certain grandeur therein? He remembered a painting by Gustave Moreau, in which Jupiter, all-powerful and gigantic, holds on his knees the frail and slim Semele, daughter of Cadmus, King of Thebes, and mother of Dionysus, like a small, delicate object, like a flower, a rose of flesh, a rose-woman. Thus, Mabel and Ouha resembled Jupiter and Semele—but the king of the apes laid her gently down on a carpet of moss, and covered her with all the caresses of his huge, heavy, agitating body.
Gorden was livid. Anguish and disgust, voluptuous even so, twisted al his nerves, but curiosity held him, as if he were petrified.
Finally, recovering himself, he went back to the opening of the cave. Down below, Archibald was waiting anxiously.
Fortunately, Gorden thought, it wasn’t this poor amorous fellow who saw all that. It would have driven the poor chap mad.
He let himself slide down the rock face, and came to rest in a standing position beside Wilson.
“Well?” Archibald queried.
“We can get Mabel whenever we want. A few blows with a pick-axe, and we can get into her home. Let’s go back, my friend. We have no more to do, now, than to see Dr. Goldry again, and then we’ll take action, with or without him. In any case, we’ll keep quiet about what we’ve just learned. Given the scientist’s mania for studying the great quadrumanes, our ancestors, and his liking for the orangutans—the free men twenty centuries behind the twentieth century of our civilization—he’s capable of taking the side of the apes.”
LXI. Toward Humanity
Far from giving up on recovering her liberty and seeing Riddle-Temple, her father and friends again, all of Mabel Smith’s thoughts were directed to that goal: discovering the best route and having herself escorted, by Ouha and his subjects, toward deliverance. Previously, too preoccupied with her safety in the midst of the hairy monsters, especially given the animosity of the jealous females disdained by the chief, the young woman had not had the leisure to search for an effective means of escape.
To flee alone, through the thousand dangers of the forest, would have been folly. What resources could a woman discover, especially one who knew nothing about the country? How could she even hope to survive? Fruits and plants offered food on all sides, but she had to anticipate arid regions, infertile savannahs, and the danger of tempting but poisonous berries. As for hunting, she no longer had her rifle, which had been lost, and perhaps broken, in the battle between the expedition and the orangutans; her revolver and the few cartridges providentially preserved would not be sufficient to defend herself, if the journey were prolonged, against the eventually-inevitable perils.
In any case, in spite of the apparent liberty that the apes had afforded her since the early days, after her introduction to the tribe, she knew that she was carefully watched. As soon as she risked a stroll outside the orangutans’ township, glimpsed faces, the friction of hairy bodies, cries—doubtless alarm signals—and the sudden emergence of a large ape, watching her from a branch, warned her of the impossibility of fight. Even if she had several hours start, with her progress impeded by inextricable thickets, she should have been quickly overtaken. Perhaps she would then be killed—or else, by means of what worse chastisement, what tortures, might Ouha the Terrible punish her?
As her influence over the sovereign increased, however, Mabel conceived a plan, built on what she had learned in the course of the journey while talking to Wilson about the expedition’s goal. She knew, by virtue of having been interested in their progress, the difficulties of their route and the constant direction of their march, that they had to steer beyond the mountains, toward the south-west. Archibald Wilson, Mr. Smith, Major Benet and Gorden had been very nearly in agreement regarding that hypothesis; it would take at least two months, having crossed the mountain chain, to get out of the virgin forest. A chain of hills that rose up increasingly further from the plain, as if no longer to be stifled by the naves of trees, would serve as a precise reference-point. Mabel had also retained the information her two flirts had given her with regarding to steering by the stars, without instruments, on clear nights.
She knew that in the heart of the virgin forest, when the interlacement of the branches and gigantic boughs did not permit the celestial lighthouses to be used as signs, the grass, bent over according to the direction of the wind, the inflection of certain trees toward a point on the horizon that attracted them, and, even better, differences in the soil and successive flora helped distinguish the zones and permitted one to maintain an approximate direction.
Given that, the American woman took advantage of the respites granted by her solitary walks, sometimes with Rava, her friend and companion in simian marriage, to search for such landmarks of deliverance. Even when escorted by Ouha, she occupied herself in confirming her knowledge, and, and the same time, familiarizing herself—by studying the apes’ precautions and being initiated by Rava—with the most frequent dangers of the forest and their remedies. She learned which plant healed the bite of the minuscule coral snake, what nauseating odor betrayed the presence of a rattlesnake, python or fer-de-lance. She was able to pick out the tracks of wild beasts and distinguish their imprints. If necessary, she had her weapon; perhaps impotent to save her, the revolver would at least spare her outrage or torture, when the time came that she judged that she was irredeemably lost.
In addition, Mabel put her ascendancy to work. After having
explored the forest in every direction with the orangs or alone, sure of getting her bearings and maintaining approximately the right direction, she resolved to lead Ouha, by clever preparation, toward a chimerical enterprise that would get her closer to her goal.
She knew which instinctive levers acted most effectively upon the royal orangutan. Ouha, primitive but already half-extracted from his bestial matrix, possessed to a supreme degree the human virtue or vice of pride: the ambition and avidity to penetrate the unknown perceptible to his infantile soul, simultaneously tyrannical and puerile.
The American woman set out to penetrate Ouha’s intimate reasoning, all the more so because the evidence of that amazing revelation became clearer every day. (She was unaware of his relationship with Goldry.) Ouha’s personality, developed on a daily basis by circumstances and events, was capable of conceiving ideas, ripening projects and calculating their probable consequences. Mabel even judged him capable of an incredible discernment and an amazing lucidity. To Mabel, the imperious soul of Ouha, magnified by the science of power and his genius, seemed predestined for greatness—and the American woman, sure of her ascendancy and her influence, wanted to take advantage of Ouha’s ambitious dreams, which she detected, caressed and increased.
In the evenings when, he was sitting next to Mabel, whose presence beside him he demanded as soon as he had finished his diurnal peregrinations, the young woman pointed out distant horizons to him, and described admirable countries by means of gestures and sounds whose meaning she had learned, evoking contests and battles, and then the repose of warriors amid the delights of the ravaged lands.
On the slopes of the mountain, she accompanied the king of the orangutans and, pointing out the direction of the promised land, seemed to model the prestigious fruits, the luxuriant vegetations. Out there—toward the south-east, where her people had long ago attained their goal—the great apes would find in abundance the clear waters of cool springs, red berries and melting bananas with pink flesh, palm-nuts and succulent golden-brown dates.
Without searching or difficulty, they would enjoy the luxuriant fertility of a land where everything existed in such profusion that, in order to possess those riches, they would have no need to tear their hands and leave shreds of their flesh on ferocious thorns. Then again, they would no longer have to fear incursions by other simian tribes. Out there, the apes could take over the habitations of humans and, when the conquest was concluded, live in bliss on the very fruits of the labor of the vanquished.
Thus, the white queen made promises shine, at the same time as she covered Ouha with praise and flattery. She talked to him, at those times, as if to an equal, affectionately and persuasively.
“You are great and you are strong, Ouha; no one is capable of resisting your energetic will and your courage. Your raised hand makes the most terrible denizens of the forest tremble. You are powerful and redoubtable. Out there, you would reign over a vast domain, more fecund with joy, beneath the radiant sky, outside the gloom of the woods to which tyrannical humans have confined your race.”
Those were the sentiments that Mabel Smith, presently Mrs. Ouha, the queen of the apes, awoke in the monster, all the more vivid in him because new visions surged forth in that mirage, as visions of unknown splendor suddenly revealed, new to young minds, expand in the imaginations of children.
Ouha followed Mabel meekly, watching her gestures, striving to pierce the veils of distance with his sharp gaze; the vague dreams became more precise as he listened to the White Queen. But that spell-casting Titania, in that tropical summer night’s dream, in Borneo, infatuated with a magnificent quadrumane Bottom, hairy all over, was nevertheless plotting to escape.
LXII. The Uncertainty and Meditation of a Scientist
Woman is often fickle. Foolish is the man who trusts her.18
Mabel Smith evolved, like all women. Her desire to escape was mitigated by the fear of losing her simian lover, whom she felt to be irreplaceable by a man. Such was her mental and physiological situation at the moment when her saviors were so fortunately ready to come to her aid.
Meanwhile, Dr. Abraham Goldry had been somewhat taken aback by the unexpected encounter with is friends. Having returned home and hidden the opening to the new tunnel by means of a large stone, which he rolled in front of it, he started talking to himself, in accordance with his habit, as all solitary individuals do.
“Here’s a decision that’s very awkward to make. It’s certain that I can’t stay here indefinitely. I’m well on the way to becoming an ape, but a thinking ape—a celebrated American doctor, expert in science and philosophy—is an abnormal being. Moreover, there’s a chance that, in the long run, my philosophy might be absorbed by animality.
“To be sure, if all the orangutans were as intelligent as Ouha, I could perhaps start a school for the more cerebral apes, but really, that one must be an anomaly. The others copy and imitate with no mental reflection. Perhaps Ouha’s children, if Miss Mabel were to bear him any, would be…oh no, that wouldn’t work, because they’d be half-breeds, not orangs…damn it!
“It’s the mental level of the apes that needs to be raised, or there’s nothing can be done. I’d definitely have to make contact with them, educate them, instruct them, as I’m doing for Ouha. What should I decide? What should I do?
“Why did the others have to turn up just as my experiment is at a critical stage? May the Devil take them, and Mabel with them! Now there’s a good idea! Yes, that’s it. I’ll help them to abduct my goddaughter, but I’ll stay. Once rid of his white woman, Ouha will be entirely mine...
“Eh? What now?”
LXIII. The Widow of Kri-Kri, Slain in Battle
He stood there nonplussed. An orangutan had come into his abode, and a female orangutan: the widow of the unfortunate Kri-Kri. In a trice she had seized the skin of her dead husband, and as turning it over and over, astonished to find it so limp and motionless.
After the triumphant return of the vanquishers of the human invasion, the barbarians, the widow had applauded her spouse’s victory more than anyone else, but, not seeing him among the heroes returning from the war, and thinking that he was dead, she had found a substitute—later, if she had a opportunity, her charms would make Kri-Kri forget the error resulting from too long an absence.
Having searched for her spouse throughout the region without result, after a long conversation with one of Ouha’s wives, she had learned that the monarch went almost every day to the mountain, taking provisions with him. Undoubtedly, Kri-Kri was guarding a cavern that Ouha was keeping to himself.
Several times, she and Maha, one of the king’s companions, as curious as all she-apes, had followed Ouha in order to discover his secret, but the master had spotted them and had inflicted such a stern correction that they had given up. However, after her beating, Maha gave vague indications to Mrs. Kri-Kri and strongly encouraged her to continue her research—and Mrs. Kri-Kri had spied on Ouha, prudently. Thus, she saw him emerging mysteriously from the cavern. Dread and curiosity had been in conflict for a long time in the widow’s mind; she knew that Ouha was capable of killing her if he caught her spying on him. In spite of everything, the desire to know had got the upper hand over the peril, and she risked going into the lair. Having wandered around for some time in the meanders of that fantastic retreat, she had discovered the doctor, who was philosophizing in the nude, and the skin of the husband she regretted nearby.
At the sight of the she-ape handling those excessively flaccid remains, Goldry instinctively launched himself forward to recover his skin. He soon came off worse, though, and did not know what saint to call upon for aid when the widow’s attention was attracted to an object that she had not yet noticed. It was Kri-Kri’s skeleton, carefully reassembled by the doctor, and which, in his opinion, furnished the cavern with its finest ornament.
Mrs. Kri-Kri approached it, and seemed to fall into a profound meditation. With extreme timidity, she put out a hand, felt the skull and the jaw and moved the tw
o arms. The bones, assembled with some difficulty by the doctor and only maintained by cleverly-placed pegs, did not resist the widow Kri-Kri’s probing for long, and the skeleton collapsed into a confused heap. The doctor, gripped by a momentary fit of anger, without reflecting that he was naked and unarmed, threw himself upon the she-ape and shoved her away brutally. The irritated female turned round, and knocked Goldry over with one hand. He thought he was doomed.
On making contact with that soft white flesh, however, the orangutan had shivered. It was, for her, an unfamiliar sensation, which troubled her to the utmost depths of her being. Instead of being ripped into little pieces, Abraham saw the widow lie down beside him and rub his skin voluptuously.
The scholarly scientist was certain no Don Juan, but the frenetic contact inspired the Beast’s desire produced in him, involuntarily, an effect that, to his great astonishment, became manifest. The widow Kri-Kri perceived it immediately and, flattered by the success won by her charms, did not hesitate for a second to take advantage of the windfall.
Goldry had not had such a surprise for years; a virility of which he had long thought himself incapable testified in favor of the human race in that regard. Obligingly, the doctor undertook a vigorous assault, but it was insufficient for the overly sentimental widow, who did her best to obtain a further success. In spite of everything, when the initial voluptuous flux had passed, Goldry seeing the frightful face of the she-ape leaning over him—him, the celebrated American doctor, honored by the members of several European academies—did not feel the slightest inspiration come to him. He was obliged, by means of artificial caresses, to attempt to calm the lubricious female—who, at any rate, lent herself to it with the best will in the world.
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