Rumor went abroad, and everywhere proclaimed to the female Apes that the great Oboo was coming to battle, and many hearts beat at the prospect of beholding him. Young women and maidens came to see, nor did the old stay away. Many who had an interest in him past, present or future, sought to look on; and those who could not be moved by love came from curiosity. With majestic step their hero advanced. Not as the common warrior comes came he forth. Slowly like the Morning, he advanced to the eyes of a wondering world. A female ape had parted his locks in the morning and picked the burrs from his shaggy limbs; and, as he stood out against the sky, his form was a monument of beauty to both the women and himself. Looking to one side and then to the other, (not to reconnoitre, but to receive the admiration of the females) he reflected, as he shook his slender legs, that they who now beheld him with solicitude would receive him back with gratitude. Victory seemed assured in his bearing, and, like the sun at noon, he dazzled the hosts with his splendor. Such was the appearance of the mighty Oboo on entering the field; and as he advanced the eastern zephyrs moved through his louse-less locks, and his brow, like the forest-crowned head of Mt. Ida, seemed glorified. Him seeing from afar the great Boomboo, calling all the Gods to his aid, ran forth to meet. “O Shoozoo,” he cried, “lend me all the heavens with their fires and loud thunders to match this terror of the plains, the wrath-inflamed fighter of men and lover of women; and to-night I will devote to you a live dragon fly caught where the thistles of the Swamp do bloom and the bats are sleeping.” So saying he seized a big water-melon, such as two men of our day could not lift, and he raised it in mid air. It was a melon which had grown on the sandy banks of Alligator Swamp; three generations had eaten fruit from that spot, and cast the seeds along the wide-reaching shore. This great water-melon the mighty Boomboo smashed on the head of Oboo. For, throwing it with great force, he sent it heavily through the air, as when a huge rock is thrown convulsively from a volcano. A great flying terror it went, casting a moving shadow over the earth; and it went not in vain; but, descending from its flight, it struck the well-picked head of Oboo, and dreadful was the sound of the thud. Bursting with a quake, as when the earth opens, it was scattered in countless pieces, never to be again united. Pulp and rind and seeds were splattered over his brow and well-smoothed locks, and the juice ran down over his face, and covered his hairy chest, and flowed from his limbs to the ground. Dripping and sticky the proud Oboo, like a half-drowned rat crawling out of a well, sneaked away, unfit to be seen, and would no longer match his prowess against the Ammi in battle. [Illustration: THE RETREAT OF THE LALI.]