My wife and I had just returned from inspecting our line of traps about nine o'clock in the morning when the forest suddenly resounded with the "hu-wa," "hu-wa," "hu-wa" of the gibbons. It seemed a long way off at first, but sounded louder and clearer every minute. At the first note we seized our guns and dashed down the mountain-side, slipping, stumbling, and falling. The animals were in the giant forest about five hundred feet below the summit of the ridge and as we neared them we moved cautiously from tree to tree, going forward only when they called. It was one of the most exciting stalks I have ever made, for the wild, ringing howls seemed always close above our heads.
We were still a hundred yards away when a huge black monkey leaped out of a tree top just as I stepped from behind a bush, and he saw me instantly. For a full half minute he hung suspended by one arm, his round head thrust forward staring intently; then launching himself into the air as though shot from a catapult he caught a branch twenty feet away, swung to another, and literally flew through the tree tops. Without a sound save the swish of the branches and splash after splash in the leaves, the entire herd followed him down the hill. It was out of range for the shotgun and my wife was ten feet behind me with the rifle, but had I had it in my hand I doubt if I could have hit one of those flying balls of fur.
We returned to camp with sorrow in our hearts, but two days later we redeemed ourselves and brought in the first new gibbons. We were sitting on a bed of fragrant pine needles watching for a squirrel which had been chattering in the upper branches of a giant tree, when suddenly the wild call of the monkeys echoed up the mountain-side.
They were far away to the left, and we ran toward them, stumbling and slipping on the moss-covered rocks and logs, the "hu-wa," "hu-wa," "hu-wa" sounding louder every moment. They seemed almost under us at times and we would stand motionless and silent only to hear the howls die away in the distance. At last we located them on the precipitous side of a deep gorge filled with an impenetrable jungle of palms and thorny plants. It was an impossible place to cross, and we sat down, irresolute and discouraged. In a few moments a chorus of howls broke out and we saw the big black apes swinging along through the trees, two hundred yards away. Finally they stopped and began to feed. They were small marks at that distance but I rested my little Mannlicher on a stump and began to shoot while Yvette watched them with the glasses. One big fellow swung out on a branch and hung with one arm while he picked a cluster of leaves with the other. Yvette saw my first shot cut a twig above his head but he did not move, and at the roar of the second he dropped heavily into the vines below. A brown female ran along the branch a few seconds later and peered down into the jungle where the first monkey had fallen. I covered her carefully with the ivory head of the front sight, pulled the trigger, and she pitched headlong off the tree.
For a few seconds there was silence, then a splash of leaves and three huge black males leaped into full view from the summit of a tall tree. They were silhouetted against a patch of sky and I fired twice in quick succession registering two clean misses. The bullets must have whizzed too close for comfort and they faded instantly into the forest like three black shadows.
For ten minutes we strained our eyes into the dense foliage hoping to catch a glimpse of a swaying branch. Suddenly Yvette heard a rustling in the low tree beneath which we were sitting and seized me violently by the arm, screaming excitedly, "There's one, right above us. Quick, quick, he's going!"
I looked up and could hardly believe my eyes for not twenty feet away hung a huge brown monkey half the size of a man. Almost in a daze I fired with the shotgun. The gibbon stopped, slowly pivoted on one long arm and a pair of eyes blazing like living coals, stared into mine. I fired again point blank as the huge mouth, baring four ugly fangs, opened and emitted a blood-curdling howl. The monkey slowly swung back again, its arm relaxed and the animal fell at my feet, stone dead.
It was a magnificent old female. By a lucky chance we had chosen, from all the trees in the forest, to sit under the very one in which the gibbon had been hiding and she had tried to steal away unnoticed.
While my wife waited to direct me from the rim of the gorge, I climbed down into the jungle to try and make my way up the opposite side where the other monkeys had fallen. It was dangerous work, for the rocks were covered with a thin layer of earth which supported a dense growth of vegetation. If I tried to let myself down a steep slope by clinging to a thick fern it would almost invariably strip away with a long layer of dirt and send me headlong.
After two bad falls I reached the bottom of the ravine where a mountain torrent leaped and foamed over the rocks and dropped in a beautiful cascade to a pool fifty or sixty feet below. The climb up the opposite side was more difficult than the descent and twice I had to return after finding the way impassable.