PAGE FRONTISPIECE SOSEE’S MOTHER ENCOUNTERS THE SNAKE 10 SHAMBOO’S RIDE 20 THE ROBBERS OF THE AMMI 31 “SEE BELOVED HOW THE MIGHTY FALL AT THE WORD OF SIMLEE AND THE STROKE OF SHOOZOO” 36 “I HAVE BROUGHT ONE OF THE AMMI INSTEAD” 51 KOREE AND SOSEE ENCOUNTER A MONSTER 58 THE RESCUE OF ORLEE 69 THE BATTLE IN THE SWAMP 80 THE CATASTROPHE 97 THE FIGHT WITH THE FIRE-MONSTER 102 THE GREEDY OKO 120 POUNDER’S MISHAP 129 THE BATTLE BEGINS 139 KOREE’S CHALLENGE 149 THE RETREAT OF THE LALI 161 SOSEE WARNS THE AMMI 172 THE WOOD-EATING ANIMAL IN THE CAMP OF THE AMMI 191 THE AMMI BREAKING THROUGH THE ICE 198 SOSEE’S STRATEGY 212 RETURN OF THE AMMI TO COCOANUT HILL 225 CHAPTER I. [Illustration] About ninety years after the fight between the Monkeys and Snakes on Cocoanut Hill, which was five hundred thousand years before our era, and near the end of the Tertiary Age, Sosee was sitting on a limb sucking a mango, when Koree came up in great consternation. “The fat baboon, from across the swamp,” he said, “has carried off Orlee while her mother was hunting berries in the bushes.” “If you love me, Koree,” replied Sosee, uttering a wild scream, “you will fetch her back, and bring me the tail of the baboon before night.” Sosee, who spoke these words, was a comely girl of twelve years, one of the new race which had recently separated from the Apes, and would no longer recognize them as equals. There was a hostility between the Apes and these upstarts, and frequent incursions were made from the territory of one on that of the other. The Apes had mostly retreated to the swamps and forests beyond, while the new race were occupying the region about Cocoanut Hill, which their ancestors of two generations before had taken, after many conflicts, from the Apes, and from which they had driven the savage beasts. Here the parents of Sosee were living, and here Sosee had grown to womanhood.