Alicia shuddered. "But would you three try that if we weren't here?" she insisted.
"I think we'd wade into one of those juju councils," I remarked vindictively. "I know I'd gladly join such a party. We'd probably appear as suddenly as we could and start shooting. We might stampede them, and a show of boldness would be our best play in any event. Of course, if they rushed us, we'd be out of luck."
"You mean——?"
"There would be four or five hundred of them, and we might get ten or perhaps fifteen apiece. They'd overwhelm us if they tried, but the psychology would probably make us win out. The fact that we were hunting them, instead of their hunting us, would frighten them."
"Couldn't you do that now?"
I shook my head. "Not with our friend the gorilla about. And we wouldn't expose you two to the possibility of our failing. There'd be nothing left for you but your own pistols."
Alicia relapsed into silence. I saw her brow knitted as she tried desperately to work out some plan by which we might fight the incredible circumstances in which we found ourselves. Overhead, the broad moon sailed serenely across the sky, shedding its rays impartially down upon us, upon the shaggy, beastly ape squatting like some demoniacal creature upon the ridgepole of the roof, and upon yelling, capering blacks about the great fires they would have lit for their juju ceremonies.
Behind us, the busy, secretive life of the bush went on—all the feedings and drinkings and matings and killings, all the comedies and all the tragedies of the jungle. Things went on, sublimely indifferent to our petty frights and fancies. The jungle attended to its business, ignoring alike our strained attitudes as we sat in the moonlight and waited for the sun to rise that we might slay a malignant ape, and the yelling of self-hypnotism of the blacks as they danced about their juju fires, working themselves into a frenzy of hatred against the white man.
At last the moon dipped down toward the west, and the stars that had watched our vigil in mild, blinking surprise grew pale at the signs of dawn. The sky grew gray, then white. A high pallid veil hid the deep-blue arch of the night, and turned slowly to golden yellow as the sun rolled up.
The mist curled aloft from the treetops as the first rays of the morning swept across the land. We became aware that we had been cold and that we now were warm. We waited eagerly until we should see the roof of the casa, and be able to pick off with our rifles the beast that lurked there.