Chapter 5 Chapter 4 Leopard

However, the apes need other assistance, because their teeth and nails can only tear rabbits apart, and nothing bigger can do it.Fortunately, nature has already provided the most suitable tools, just waiting for their intelligence to develop enough to know how to use them. First, there is a crude but effective knife-saw of a style that served the great apes for three million years.That is the ready-made toothed mandible of an antelope; a tool that would not have been substantially improved until the invention of steel.There is also duiker horn, which is ready-made for an awl or dagger; and the complete jaw of almost any small animal, which can be made into a scraping tool.

Stone sticks, tooth saws, horns, bone scrapers—these are the wonderful inventions by which the apes survived. The apes had already had this first encounter.The opportunity will not come again; the future will practically be entirely in their own hands. The apes will no longer become obstinate due to hunger, they have leisure and time for the most preliminary thinking.They had become accustomed to the new way of life, though no one connected it with the slab still erected beside the river path.If they stop to consider what happened, they can only boast that they have improved their position by their own efforts; in fact, they have long since forgotten that there is any other way of being.

That race of apes also encountered occasional days of scarcity, though such days no longer threatened their existence.One day they hadn't killed anything until dusk; Mochizuki led his weary and disaffected companions home, and the cave was hopeful.Right at the door of their cave, they discovered the rare good fortune that nature provided. A full-grown eland lies just beside the trail.One of its front legs was broken, but its fighting spirit was not greatly diminished.The jackals surrounding it were far away from its pair of sharp-edged horns.Jackals aren't afraid to wait; they know they just have to wait.

But the wolves forgot about the competition for survival, and when the orangutan arrived, they had to retreat angrily. The apes circled carefully, too, keeping out of the reach of the dangerous horns; then they attacked with clubs and stones. The attack was not very effective and uncoordinated; and by the time the poor sheep was dead and it was nearly dark—the wolves regained their courage.Mochizuki is in a dilemma, abandoning it will lead to hunger, staying and being afraid, and gradually realizes that it may be at his own expense.It's too dangerous to stay any longer. Then, not for the first time, nor for the last, he showed himself to be a genius.

After great effort, he imagined putting the dead antelope - in the safety of his own cave.He began to drag the antelope towards the cliff; the other apes immediately understood his intentions and rallied to help. If he had known beforehand that the task would be difficult, he would not have attempted it.Only his brute strength, combined with the agility inherited from his tree-climbing ancestors, enabled him to drag the carcass up the steep slope.Facing setbacks several times, he was so sad that he wanted to cry, and almost gave up the prey, but the tenacity as long as hunger drove him to persevere.Other apes sometimes help, sometimes they become resistance, and most of the time they are in the way.At last, however, it worked; the mangled antelope was dragged into the mouth of the hole, as the sun's afterglow faded in the sky; and the chomping began.

A few hours later, Mochizuki woke up with a full belly.For some reason, he sat up in the dark, and his friends who were equally well fed were lying around in disorder, but he tried his best to listen to the movement in the dark night outside. Nothing was heard except the muffled snoring around him; the whole outside world seemed to be asleep.Under the bright moon, the rock outside the cave is as white as bones.Any premonition of catastrophe seemed absolutely unrealistic. Then, from a long distance away, there was the sound of a stone falling to the ground.Frightened and curious, Mochizuki climbed onto the ledge outside the cave and stared down the cliff.

If you don't see it, you're done. The sight made him so frightened that his limbs became weak and he couldn't move for a long time.Just twenty feet below, two glittering eyes were looking straight up at him; his eyes were so overwhelmed with terror that he did not feel that behind them a lithe, mottled body was rushing swiftly and soundlessly to the rocks. Jump over the stream and come.Leopards have never climbed so high.It must have known that there were apes living in each cave, but it did not visit the caves below.It was in pursuit of other objects; following the trail of blood, a few seconds after climbing up the moonlit cliff, the night was made more miserable by the alarm screams of the apes in the cave above.The leopard realized that he had lost the factor of the surprise attack, and roared angrily.But it didn't stop because it knew it had nothing to fear.

The leopard used the ledge to rest for a while in the narrow open air.The smell of blood everywhere concentrated its murderous, undeveloped mind on an overriding desire. Without further hesitation, it stepped lightly into the hole. At this moment, the leopard made its first mistake, because once it stepped out of the moonlight, even its pair of super luminous eyes felt uncomfortable for a moment.The half figure of the leopard with its back to the entrance of the cave is reflected, and the ape sees it more clearly than it sees the ape.They're terrified, but they're not completely powerless anymore.

The leopard roared arrogantly and confidently, waved its long tail, and stepped forward to search for the tender meat it was eager to eat.If it had met its prey in the open air, it would have had no problem; but then the apes had no way out, and their survival made them extraordinarily brave.Moreover, this is the first time they have the means of success. The leopard felt a dizzy blow on the head, and then realized that something was wrong.It rushed forward with its two front paws, claws digging into the tender meat, causing a wail.Then, a sharp thing stabbed into its side, causing pain to the heart and stomach—one stab, another stab, three stabs.It whirled in an attempt to attack the screaming and jumping figures around it.

The leopard's nose was hit hard again.It gritted its teeth toward a blur of moving white light—and gnawed on a useless white bone.Finally, in an unbelievable humiliation, its tail was pulled out by the roots. Leopard Yu turned around again and threw a daring executioner onto the disaster wall.But no matter how hard it struggles, it can't escape the rain of impact, the thumping of rough weapons with clumsy but powerful fists.The scale of its roar changed gradually, from pain and shock to out-and-out fear.The insatiable predator is now the hunted, desperately trying to withdraw from the field.

Then it made a second mistake, because it was so frightened and frightened that it forgot where it was.Perhaps dizzy from the hammer blows that rained down on its head, it jumped out of the hole with a sudden leap.With a terrifying howl, it fell out of the rock out of thin air.It seemed after a long time before it fell with a coaxing sound on a protruding rock halfway up the cliff; then, only the sound of falling gravel could be heard, and soon the echo disappeared in the darkness. In the intoxication of victory, Mochizuki danced and stammered towards the entrance of the cave.He was rightly aware that his whole realm had changed.He was no longer the powerless victim of the forces around him. Then he went back into the cave and got a good night's sleep for the first time in his life. The next morning, the apes found the leopard's body under the cliff.This subdued devil, even after death, made everyone dare not approach it for a long time, but then the apes moved closer with bone knives and bone saws in their hands. It was a tough job, and they didn't go hunting that day.