"I couldn't look round for the first three or four minutes," he said. "Too busy! These trees are a damned nuisance and the air's like a cauldron."
Without wasting further time in talking, we backed the machine to one corner of the "aerodrome," started the engine and, this time, got away with both of us safely aboard.
An hour later we were back in Corisco telling Gran'pa of our first encounter with a wild gorilla.
"It's a great pity you had to shoot it, George," he said.
"If I hadn't, neither of us would have been here now!" I exclaimed, irritably.
"Oh, I'm not complaining. But we shall have to be careful not to let it occur again. These brutes must be taken alive—or not at all. I suppose you couldn't have frightened it away?"
"Yes!" I breathed. "As easily as you could scare off an elephant with a pop-gun."
"H'm! . . . Well, tomorrow we must get to work on that portable cage. It's no use going out again until we are properly prepared and can rely on making a capture. By the way, while you were away Stringer has been busy hypnotizing half-a-dozen blacks. He said very little to them; but his gaze seemed to work wonders. They behaved like docile children."
"Did they? I wish we'd taken him with us to-day," I answered, still incensed at the casual way Gran'pa had treated our escape. "He might have put the 'fluence' on that gorilla and persuaded the brute to swing the propeller when we were safely aboard. I'm beginning to think, however, that the only effective weapon against these gentlemen of the jungle will be hand grenades."
But I spoke, as so many of us do, without knowledge of what the future had in store. I suppose that it is natural for every pioneer to have his moments of doubt and anxiety.