Suddenly there was a tremendous rush of arctic animals over both camps, and all the country, as far as the eye could reach, was alive with them. They came from the north where the heavy snows had started a migration southward. Aurochs, reindeer, Irish elk and other kinds now extinct, were in the herds. They rushed pell-mell before the snows, tramping down everything in their way, and falling over one another, like a stampede of buffaloes or wild horses. Many were trampled to death or else left maimed in their trail. Mingled among them were lions, leopards and other savage beasts, which followed them for food, or were also migrating to a warmer climate; so that there was a slaughter of many kinds in the herds. It seemed to the Ammi as if all the beasts had gone to war, as well as the Men and Apes, and were marching in great armies and fighting constant battles. “The Sky and the North are both pouring out their forces upon us,” said Abroo. “Let us catch them, and keep them for food,” said Oko, who had been trying to tame a calf of the Urus which he had captured, thus beginning the work of domestication, which the descendants of the Ammi have continued till now. “It is better to let them go,” said Koree, who picked up the clubs and missiles which they had scattered; “we ought to be glad to be rid of them.” For some of the Ammi had been trampled to death in the stampede, so that this incursion of cattle upon them was nearly as destructive as the war. After the herds had gone by, they were seen to spread out over the plains in the direction from which the Ammi had come to the seat of war. There they found grass and were leisurely grazing. “It looks,” said Abroo, “as if they had come to stay, so that when we return from the war they will dispute the possession of Cocoanut Hill with us.” The snow, however, continued to fall, which, like the curse of the wandering Jew, was to give the fugitives no rest. CHAPTER XXXI. [Illustration] Meanwhile the Lali who had been worsted in the war, and whose defeat even the gallant Oboo could not avert, determined on a change of tactics. Recognizing their inferiority as combatants (being not so generally armed or so skilled in the use of arms as the Ammi), they resolved to make up in numbers what they lacked in skill; and so they sent out ambassadors and summoned all the apes from the countries beyond, shrewdly using the respite of the last few days from battle to collect allies. Out into the forests and among the palm groves, therefore, they went, calling to the inhabitants of the trees and vines to come down, and sending their summons into the tangled thickets of the swamps. And the apes left their cocoanuts and cinnamon branches, and came up out of their fisheries, (abandoning their sports with parrots, and their fights with owls,) and hurried to the country of the Lali and the seat of war.