My Dark Companions and Their Strange Stories

by Henry M. Stanley

He began to think, scratching the fur on his head, on his sides, and his paunch, picking up one thing and then another in an absent-minded way. And then he appeared to have made up a plan.

Whatever it was, this is what he did. It was still early morning, and as there was no sign of a sun, it was cold, and human beings must have been finishing their last sleep. He got up and went straight for the plantation. On the edge of the banana-grove he heard a cock crow; he stopped and listened to it; he became angry.

“Some one,” he said to himself, “is stealing my bananas,” and with that he marched in the direction where the cock was crowing.

He came to the open place in front of the village, and saw several tall houses much larger than his own nest; and while he was looking at them, the door of one of them was opened, and a man came out. He crept towards him, and before he could cry out the gorilla had squeezed him until his ribs had cracked, and he was dead; he flung him down, and entered into the hut. He there saw a woman, who was blowing a fire on the hearth, and he took hold of her and squeezed her until there was no life left in her body. There were three children inside, and a bed on the floor. He treated them also in the same way, and they were all dead. Then he went into another house, and slew all the people in it, one with a squeeze, another with a squeeze and a bite with his great teeth, and there was not one left alive. In this way he entered into five houses and killed all the people in them, but in the sixth house lived the boy Kinneneh and his old mother.

Kinneneh had fancied that he heard an unusual sound, and he had stood inside with his eyes close to a chink in the reed door for some time when he saw something that resembled what might be said to be half animal and half man. He walked like a man, but had the fur of a beast. His arms were long, and his body was twice the breadth and thickness of a full-grown man. He did not know what it was, and when he saw it go into his neighbours’ houses, and heard those strange sounds, he grew afraid, and turned and woke his mother, saying,

“Mother, wake up! there is a strange big beast in our village killing our people. So wake up quickly and follow me.”

“But whither shall we fly, my son?” she whispered anxiously.

“Up to the loft, and lie low in the darkest place,” replied Kinneneh, and he set her the example and assisted his mother.

Now those Uganda houses are not low-roofed like these of Congo-land, but are very high, as high as a tree, and they rise to a point, and near the top there is a loft where we stow our nets, and pots, and where our spear-shafts and bows are kept to season, and where our corn is kept to dry, and green bananas are stored to ripen. It was in this dark lofty place that Kinneneh hid himself and his mother, and waited in silence.