I use the word "watching," because I could not dispel the conviction that unseen eyes followed our every movement. Oakley must have felt it, too, for neither of us spoke. We looked—and, as we did so, we slipped the revolvers from our belts. The touch of the cool butt was comforting. It just saved me from panic and gave me back my manhood. After all, were we not Lords of Creation, even in this desolate place? We had the means of defence, the means of escape, and the brains to utilize both. I reasoned all this out swiftly, and gradually the thumping in my chest subsided and I became calmer. In spite of this my hand shook and I saw that Oakley had noticed it.
"Nerves!" I said to him. "How're yours?"
"Rotten! I'd much rather be up in that hell in the heavens again! . . . What's that?"
Behind me, there was a sudden noise as of someone breaking twigs and branches—a stealthy and steady crackle of splitting wood.
We swung round in the direction of the sound and I saw the underbrush sway and part.
A second later there appeared an immense gorilla on all fours. The moment he caught sight of us he stood erect and stared malevolently in our faces—the most unforgettably ferocious brute it is possible to imagine.
The trivial encounters with gorillas in England paled into nothingness compared with this, for the animal was less than a dozen yards away. Quite six feet in height, with immense body, grotesquely inflated chest and huge muscular arms, he stood before us as the indisputable monarch of the African jungle.
He showed not the least trace of fear, but immediately let forth roar upon roar of defiance and hate.
A cold sweat broke out over my whole body, followed by a paralyzing sensation of sickness. All the blind brutality of Nature "red in tooth and claw," all its vindictiveness, all its strength and cunning, seemed to be centred in that dreadful cry, which began as a sharp bark and glided swiftly into a deep roll. It came up in great gusts of rage from the brute's chest like the sound of distant thunder. Then it shut off as suddenly as it began.
Oakley and I stood in horrified silence, literally unable to move, and the beast advanced a few steps—then stopped to emit that hideous roar—advanced again, and finally halted at a distance of some half-dozen yards from us. A crest of short hair on its forehead was twitching rapidly up and down, and its powerful fangs were bared, and glistening white in the sunshine. It was a repulsive and thrilling exhibition of stark animal brutality, and yet in some strange way it no longer filled me with fear. The attitude of the beast, menacing as it was, seemed to be too humanly blustering, too exaggerated, too "stagey."