Then off in the distance was heard a great chorus of screams, while a rush of all the Apes to that quarter drew the battle with it. The girls, who had been led to the war by Watch-the-Girls, then thought to enter the fight. They had been restrained by their leader; but now, impetuous, they rushed against the enemy; whom seeing, the salacious Apes, enamoured of the daughters of Men, and forgetting their anger in their lust, gave up the battle for a rape, and rushed upon the girls to make them prisoners. The girls, scorning to be carried away instead of attacked, (having come to fight and not to be wooed), struggled hard with their captors, but more from pride than desire. Then all the Ammi, seeing that their girls were about to be taken, transferred the war to that quarter, and fought for their own, instead of against the enemy. Inspired by jealousy as well as rage, the battle now waxed fiercer, as when to a raging fire is added the wind, and the conflagration spreads into a forest. Death moved about rapidly over the field, visiting now a man and now an ape, and calling him to the Walhalla beyond the Swamp; and the plain was scattered with his victims. CHAPTER XXIX. [Illustration] Oboo, hearing there was a fight for girls, now came forward to take part. He had till now sulked in the rear, because of Ilo’s good fortune in possessing Sosee. Defeated in love, and still smarting from his wounds, he had refused, like Achilles, to fight, and, nursing his wrath afar off, desired the defeat of the Lali. He had long insisted that Sosee should be restored to the Ammi, and the war ended. But, as others continued it, he persisted in his absence, even when the Lali were in danger of rout and their possessions of loss. Many had fallen on account of his inaction. Oft did the chiefs approach him to assuage his wrath. But the volcanic fires in his breast refused to be cooled, and awaited their time to burst out and destroy his rivals. An ape will not waste himself on an enemy when he has a rival for his anger. But hearing that there was to be a capture of girls, his anger melted into lust, and he relented. What neither the North Wind nor the Rain could do the warmth within him sufficed to accomplish—it moved his mighty will. For dread War, stalking over the land and breathing his hot breath in his face, had failed to arouse him. Mightier Reason, borne on the tongue of Pity, could not move him. Even Glory had no allurements to draw him from his retreat. But Beauty, which now visited him in fancies, tickled him into action; and, like the needle following the invisible pole, he went, strongly impelled, to the scene of battle, where to his thoughts a field was pictured with delights.