Pan Satyrus went swinging away again. He came back munching a cabbage-heart, from a palm tree.
Ape had finished his shoelaces, was making a belt.
'I dunno much about chimps' faces, Pan, but you look happy.'
Pan nodded, rocking on his knuckles, his feet free of the ground. 'This isn't tropical,' he said. 'It's just semi- tropical. And it isn't really forest, just little patches of it. But for the first time in my life, I feel like a real ape, instead of some sort of men's toy.'
Happy was stretched out, his back to a tree. 'Like they gave you a ship all your own, Ape. No officers, no Department of the Navy to tell you what to do.'
'I'm a torpedoman, not a quartermaster,' Ape said. 'But I guess, at that, I could run a ship. If I had one. But I ain't never going to.'
'No, you're not,' Happy said, 'We're going to be a couple of seamen seconds if and when they catch us. We're AWOL, if not deserters, by now.'
A branch of live oak was lying on the ground. It had fallen from the tree against which Happy rested, but it hadn't rotted yet; and it was more than six inches thick. Pan Satyrus reached over and snapped it in two. 'You came with me because you were in fear of your lives if you didn't.'
'We're carrying out our duty,' Happy said. 'Now that I think it over. The skipper of the Cooke told us to stick with you. No naval officer since has cancelled the duty. We don't know who those guys back there in that tank farm are.'
Rooshians,' Ape said. 'We thought they was Rooshians. They never showed us no I.D., and if they had, we'da thought it was phoney. Rooshians.'
'We're enlisted men,' Happy said. 'We ain't supposed to have brains, huh?' He stuck out his tongue and goggled his eyes.
Pan Satyrus made the noise that most people, eventually, decided was his laugh. 'We can last here for years,' he said. 'There are all kinds of delicious things in these woods. And we can move south, slowly, until we are in the Everglades.'
'They'll turn out every cop in the country,' Ape said. 'They'll pull out the God-damned Marines, and comb the boondocks till they find us.'
'The man doesn't live who could find a chimpanzee in a semi-tropical forest,' Fan said. 'Why, I can shin up the first palmetto, and hide in the fronds.'
'Not man,' Happy said. 'Men. Thousands, tens of thousands of them. Enough to cut down all your palm trees. And how about us? We're men, not chimps. Even Ape is a man, though he doesn't look like it.'
Ape Bates looked at them, and said, 'T'anks, pal.'
'Maybe you'd better go to a road and give yourselves up,' Pan said. 'Turn yourselves over to the naval authorities — is that right? — and nothing much will happen to you.'
Chief Bates looked at Happy; Happy looked back at the chief, who said, 'Where was you born. Pan?'
'The Primate House, Bronx Zoo. That's in New York.'
'I know,' Ape said. 'You ain't never been on your own in your life. It can freeze in this Florida; there's wild dogs and pigs and I dunno what all. We better stick with you.'
'Oh, but this is my natural habitat.'
'Sure,' Happy said. 'Sure. Anyway, we haven't any choice. Skipper said to stick with you.'
'Let's march,' Ape said. 'Let's put some more boondocking behind us. Them Feds is likely to call out the dogs on us.'
So they slugged their way across the flat country, stumbling into sink holes so covered with green scum that they looked like meadows; disturbing swarms of mosquitoes that took their quick, blistering revenge; once Pan, carelessly, got too near a clump of Spanish bayonet, and a thorn broke off in the palm of his hand. None of them had a knife or even a needle to dig the thorn out; the black, pink-palmed hand swelled rapidly.
There was plenty of water, and Pan Satyrus collected endless quantities of green nuts, ripe and unripe fruits, raw cabbage-hearts. But none of them, not even Pan, was really used to such a diet; the two sailors progressed to the music of their rumbling stomachs, and Pan Satyrus became strangely subdued.
'Them Marines do this all the time,' Ape said. He was sitting under a palmetto, holding his ample paunch in his hands. His face was half again its usual size from mosquito bites.
'If I'd wanted to be a marine, I would have joined them,' Happy said.
Pan Satyrus said, 'If this were Equatorial Africa.. '
'It ain't,' Ape said.
'If we'd only brought Dr. Bedoian with us.'
'What good would that do?' Happy asked. 'Without that little black bag, a doc is just another guy in the woods. Only, we need a doctor, complete with black bag.'
Somewhere Pan Satyrus had picked up a large, round fruit. He turned it in his unswollen hand. 'I wonder if this is good to eat.'
'Nothing's good to eat that isn't right off the fire,' Happy said.
'Wit' a blonde waitress to bring it to you, an' a bottle of beer to wash it down,' Ape said.
Happy groaned.
'We're ruined by civilization,' Pan Satyrus said. 'Believe it or not, the soles of my feet are sore. I've never had to walk very far in my life.'
'I suppose at home, in Africa, you'd swing from tree to tree,' Happy said.
'To a limited extent,' Pan told him. Then he shook his massive head. 'At least, so I've read. I don't really know. I am just a second-rate man, not an ape at all. In all my seven and a half years, this is my first afternoon without a keeper.'
He looked at them. 'Not that I mean to disparage you gentlemen. But you've never had instructions in caring for chimpanzees.'
'I never really rated Ape,' Chief Bates said. 'The guys just called me that.'
'So we're licked,' Happy said. 'Night's coming on, we don't even have matches to make a smudge. And we couldn't if we wanted to, on account of the Feds'll have helicopter patrols out, looking for us. So what?'
'There's a highway about a half a mile over that way,' Pan said. 'I saw it from the tree this grew on.' He looked at the fruit again, turned it in his long fingers, and threw it away. I'll lead the way, gentle-men.'
Happy said, 'I'm sorry, Pan.'
'Not your fault.'
'Yeah,' Ape said, 'hut you got us outa that brig. And then we been nothing but a drag on you.'
'No, no. My feet hurt, and I'm not used to this food. I'll climb a tree and pick a way for us.'
'Hold on, Pan,' Happy said. 'Sure, you got a thorn in your hand. But you could live for years on the stuff that's made us sick. You could keep warm with some, say, palm leaves over you. So why are you turning yourself in?'
'I don't really like it out here in the hammocks,' Pan said.
'Don't feed me that!' Happy said, sharply.
'I'm a second grade chimp, a third grade man,' Pan said, slowly. 'I began to think of being alone, and I didn't like it. I couldn't stand it.'
Ape said, 'On accounta you retrogressed, or devoluted or whatever?'
'Yes.'
'You got the education, over other guys' shoulders, but you got it,' Happy said. 'How do chimpanzees live? Alone?'
'They travel in small groups, two to four males, about twice as many females and whatever children they have.'
'So you haven't changed,' Happy said. 'You're still a chimp. All you need is a dame, a lady chimp. You stay here, Pan, and Ape and me'll go knock off a zoo, steal you a wife.'
'No,' Pan said. 'You're in enough trouble now,'.
'And that's it, of course.' Happy's face was sadly triumphant. 'You're sorry cause you led us off the duty. We were told to guard you, and we haven't.'
Pan nodded, unhappily. He made crutches of his front arms, and swung on them, thinking. 'Yes. I mean, we've been talking. Any time Ape wants to, he can draw two-thirds pay and no work. You could get half pay, with more than twenty years in the Navy. But you don't, and so the Navy means something to you, and I have maybe
