Then the underbrush swayed rapidly ahead, and presently there stood before us an immense male gorilla. He had come through the jungle on all-fours, to see who dared to disturb him; but when he saw our party he stood up and looked us boldly in the face. He stood about a dozen yards from us, and it was a sight I shall never forget. He looked so big! Nearly six feet high, with immense body, huge chest, and great muscular arms, with fiercely-glaring, large, deep, gray eyes, and a hellish expression of face, which seemed to me like some nightmare vision. Thus stood before me the king of the African forest.
How black his face was!
He was not afraid of us. He stood there, and beat his breast with his huge fists till it resounded like an immense bass drum, which is their mode of offering defiance; meantime giving vent to roar after roar.
This roar was the most singular and awful noise I had ever heard in these African forests. It began with a sharp bark, like that of an angry dog; then glided into a deep bass roll which literally and closely resembled the roll of distant thunder along the sky. I have heard the lion roar, but greater, deeper, and more fearful is the roar of the gorilla. So deep is it that it seems to proceed less from the mouth and throat than from the deep chest and vast paunch of the beast.
The earth was literally shaking under my feet as he roared, and for a while I knew not where I was. Was it an apparition from the infernal regions? Was I asleep or not? I was soon reminded that it was not a dream.
I said quietly to myself—“Du Chaillu, if you do not kill this gorilla, as sure as you are born he will kill you.”
His eyes began to flash fierce fire as we stood motionless on the defensive, and the crest of short hair which stands on his forehead began to twitch rapidly up and down and was perfectly frightful to look at. His powerful fangs, or enormous canines, were shown as he again sent forth a thunderous roar: the red inside of his mouth contrasted singularly with his intensely black face.
And now truly he reminded me of nothing but some hellish dream-creature—a being of that hideous order, half man, half beast, which we find pictured by old artists in some representations of the infernal regions; but nothing they ever painted could approach this horrid monster in ugliness.
He advanced a few steps in a waddling way, for his short legs seemed incapable of supporting his huge body; then stopped to utter that hideous roar again—advanced again, and finally stopped when at a distance of five or six yards from us. And then—as he extended his arms as though ready to clutch us, and just as he began another of his frightful roars, beating his breast with rage—what a huge hand he had!—I fired, and killed him.
