FIERCE ATTACK OF A GORILLA.
THE GORILLA IS SHOT.
With a groan that had something terribly human in it, and yet was full of brutishness, he fell forward on his face like a man when he is struck by a bullet in the chest. He shook convulsively for a few minutes, his limbs moved about in a struggling way, the tremor of the muscles ceased, and then all was quiet—death had done its work.
The monster was hardly dead when I suddenly began to tremble all over, my lower jaw met my upper one in a way I did not like at all, and my men looked at me with their mouths wide open in perfect amazement. They could hardly believe their eyes, but having recovered themselves, they asked me what was the matter. I answered that I did not know, and that I had asked myself the same question.
For fifteen minutes my jaws went on cracking against each other, and the more I tried to stop them the more they chattered. I felt awfully mortified; but there was no help for it.
I said—“Next time you will see; I shall not do it again.” I kept my word, but I never met a large male gorilla without thinking that it might be the last of me.
There was great rejoicing, but it did not last long, for they soon began to quarrel about the apportionment of the meat. They really eat the creature, and the Fans told me that next to the flesh of man the gorilla meat was the best. It looked wonderfully like beef, only it seemed to be almost wholly composed of muscle.
I saw that they would come to blows presently if I did not interfere; hence I said that if they were going to fight I would join in; and taking the butt-end of my gun, I said I would smash the heads of the three while they were fighting with each other.
This saying of mine at once made them laugh and they became quiet. They knew that I meant what I said, and they did not fancy getting a thrashing.
The subject of the quarrel was about the brain of the gorilla. Miengai said he would have the whole of it, for he was the oldest. What would they have known about the spirit pointing out to me if it had not been for him? He said this with such complacency and self-satisfaction that I could not help smiling; but this argument of Miengai did not seem to satisfy Makinda and Yeava.