All this time I stood wonderingly staring at the white face of the creature. It was really marvellous, and quite incomprehensible. A more strange and weird-looking animal I never saw.
While I stood here, up came two of my hunters, and began to laugh at me. "Look, Chaillie," said they, calling me by the name I am known by among them—"look at your friend. Every time we kill gorilla, you tell us look at your black friend, your first cousin. Now, you see, look at your white friend." Then came a roar of laughter at what they thought a tremendous joke.
"Look! he got straight hair, all same as you! See white face of your cousin from the bush! He is nearer to you than the gorilla is to us!"
Then they roared again.
"Gorilla no got woolly hair like me. This one straight hair like you."
"Yes," said I; "but when he gets old his face is black; and do you not see his nose, how flat it is, like yours?"
Whereat there was a louder roar than before.
The mother was old, to judge by her teeth, which were much worn; but she was quite black in the face; in fact, her skin was black. Like all the nshiego mbouvé, she was bald-headed.
Now I must give you an account of the little fellow who excited all this surprise and merriment. He lived five months, and became perfectly tame and docile. I called him "Tommy," to which name he soon began to answer.
Three days after his capture, he was quite tame. He then ate crackers out of my hands, devoured boiled rice and roasted plantain, and drank the milk of a goat. Two weeks after his capture, he was perfectly tamed, and no longer required to be tied up. He ran about the camp, and, when we went back to Obindji's town, he found his way about the village and into the huts just as though he had been raised there.