CHAPTER IX.
DOWN THE RIVER IN A CANOE.—A STRANGE PASSENGER.—TALK WITH A GORILLA.—LANDING THROUGH THE BREAKERS.—PREPARING TO CROSS THE CONTINENT.—THE DEPARTURE.
On the 18th of August, 1864, I sent back the vessel to England to the Messrs. Baring, and early that morning we left my settlement and sailed down the river in my largest canoe. We had a strange lot of passengers with us. The most remarkable of them was Master Tom Gorilla; not far from him, at the bottom of the canoe, alive and kicking, was a yellow wild boar, which I had raised from a little bit of a fellow; and near the boar were two splendid fishing eagles. Another canoe contained the skins and skeletons of several gorillas, the skins of chimpanzees and other animals, besides a great many insects, butterflies, and shells.
Tom had managed to get on top of the little house I had made for him, and there he sat screaming. It was a good thing that the chain around his neck kept him at a safe distance from us. This morning, as we came down the river, he was fiercer than I had ever before seen him. Tom was much stronger than Fighting Joe, with whom you became acquainted in one of my preceding volumes, and consequently a more formidable fellow to deal with. Happily, he could not come down upon us and bite any of us. I could not help laughing when I saw him so angry. He could not understand why he had been disturbed; he did not like the looks of things around him, and his fierce and treacherous eyes did not bode us any good.
I said to him, "Tom, you are going to the white man's country; I wish you health. You are an ugly little rascal; all my kindness to you has not made you grateful. The day that I am to bid you good-by sees you as intractable as ever. You always snatch from my hands the food I give you, and then bolt with it to the farthest corner of your abode, or as far as the length of your chain will allow. I have to be very careful with you, for fear of your biting me. Tom, you have a very bad temper. When you are angry you beat the ground with your hands and feet, just like a big, grown-up gorilla. I suppose, if you were a full-grown gorilla, you would beat your chest. Tom," said I, "many times you have woke me in the night by your sudden screams; often you have tried to take your own life—I suppose it was because you could not bear captivity. I have rescued you several times from death in your attempts to strangle yourself with your chain, through rage at being kept a prisoner. Oh, Tom, how often you have twisted that chain around and around the post to which you were attached, until it became quite short, and then pressed with your feet the lower part of the post, till you almost succeeded in committing suicide by strangulation, and would have succeeded if I had not come to your rescue. Tom, I have been patient with you; I have taken care of you, and you have my best wishes for a prosperous voyage, and I hope you will reach the white man's country in safety."
The moment I paused in this address Tom would answer me with a growl.
"Tom, I have laid in a great deal of food for you on shipboard: there are two hundred bunches of bananas and plantains, a great many pine-apples, a lot of sugar-cane, and many barrels of berries and nuts; so you will have plenty of food. But, Tom, you must try to eat the white man's food, for the bananas and the berries will not last all the voyage. Thus far I have not been able to cook you any of the white man's food, though I have nearly starved you, and kept you for days with hardly any food at all."
Another growl greeted this talk, as if to say, "I know what you say to me."