This, added to the specimens on hand, brought the material for the group to one old male, two females, and a young male of about four years of age.
That night as I came into camp my mind went back to a certain day eleven years before when I was hunting lions on the Uasin Gishu Plateau with a moving-picture camera. A most wonderful opportunity had then been given me. Full in front of me the native hunters had drawn a lion's charge and killed the lion with their spears. But the opportunity had been as short-lived as it was magnificent, and the kind of camera I had then could not be handled that quickly. As I walked back to camp that night, I was determined to make a naturalist's moving-picture camera that would prevent my missing such a chance if ever such a one came my way again. From 1910 to 1916 I worked on this camera whenever I had a minute to spare. By 1917 I had the pleasure of knowing that it was used on observation planes destined for the battlefields of France. I had myself never had a chance to try my invention, except experimentally, until this trip to Africa. On this expedition I had brought two—a large one for panorama work and a smaller one nicknamed "the Gorilla" for animal work. "The Gorilla" had taken 300 feet of film of the animal that had heretofore never been taken alive in its native wilds by any camera, still or moving. Few things have given me greater satisfaction than the realization that the failure of 1910 had led directly to the success of 1921.
To make assurance doubly sure, as night came on I had a fire made in the door of my tent and comforted by its warmth I took a little piece of the end of the film and developed it. It was all right. I took another sample from the middle. It, too, came out strong. I was satisfied—more satisfied than a man ever should be—but I revelled in the feeling.
CHAPTER XIII THE LONE MALE OF KARISIMBI
By November 14th, I felt about as happy and about as unhappy as I ever have in my life. I felt exceedingly well about the success of my gorilla hunts. I had four fine specimens for the group which I intended to mount for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and I had several hundred feet of moving-picture film of live gorillas in their native forests—the first photographs of live wild gorillas ever taken. I also had the fever and that was what I was unhappy about. It was not only uncomfortable but it also threatened to interfere seriously with my plans and to put me in an embarrassing position with the rest of the party. Mr. and Mrs. Bradley and Miss Miller were camped at Kissenyi two days' march away. It had been agreed that I should investigate the gorillas alone first, but it was not contemplated that I get sick during the investigation and not be ready to provide hunting for them. They had come all the way to Central Africa to hunt gorillas and the obligation rested on me to see that they had that experience. I was afraid that if I did not get them up into the gorilla mountains quickly, I might not be in shape to fulfil this obligation and pleasure. So I sent a rather urgent message that they come up to my camp. Solicitation for my health and keenness for the hunt led Bradley and the two ladies to make the two days' march in one.
This taking ladies to hunt gorillas had caused a certain amount of adverse comment of two kinds. The uninitiated in African hunting censored me for leading the ladies into such terrible dangers. The initiated, or rather some of them, were a little irritated with me because if I showed that ladies with no previous hunting experience could hunt gorillas, elephants, and lions, much of the heroics which have attached to African big-game hunting would begin to wane. As a naturalist interested in preserving African wild life, I was glad to do anything that might make killing animals less attractive.
I had never been in gorilla country before this trip, but I had started in with the firm conviction that hunting gorillas was not dangerous, or, of course, I should not have taken the two ladies to hunt them. My experiences proved my theory even more thoroughly than I had expected. Consequently, when the ladies arrived I was prepared to take them after gorillas without the slightest misgivings. After a day of rest at the camp from which I had hunted, we moved our base a thousand feet higher up (to about 10,000 feet above sea level) to the Saddle between the two mountains, Mikeno and Karisimbi. We had two good-sized tents, one for Mrs. Bradley and Miss Miller and the other for Bradley and me. We had a fly also for a dining tent. These arrangements were quite comfortable except for the cold. It was about 45 degrees Fahrenheit at night at the Saddle Camp. There was an old five-gallon metal cask with holes in it which when filled with coals made a fair stove for the women's tent, but the men's tent and the mess tent gave one very little feeling of the tropics, in spite of the fact that we were very near the equator. But if we were cold our plight was not to be compared to the condition of the porters, gun-bearers, and guides. They had little or no clothing and they spent the night in hovels which they constructed in various places around camp, the chief characteristic of which was a limited space which insured crowding and a roof which would keep off the rain.