The Gorilla Hunters by R. M. Ballantyne (early readers TXT) 📖

chief of this village was connected by marriage with King Jambai—a most fortunate circumstance for us, as it ensured our being hospitably received. The chief came out to meet us riding on the shoulders of a slave, who, although a much smaller man than his master, seemed to support his load with much case. Probably habit had strengthened him for his special work. A large hut was set apart for our accommodation; a dish of yams, a roast monkey, and a couple of fowls were sent to us soon after our arrival, and, in short, we experienced the kindest possible reception.

None of the natives of this village had ever seen a white face in their lives, and, as may well be imagined, their curiosity and amazement were unbounded. The people came constantly crowding round our hut, remaining, however, at a respectful distance, and gazed at us until I began to fear they would never go away.

Here we remained for three weeks, during which time Jack’s wounds healed up, and his strength returned rapidly. Peterkin and I employed ourselves in alternately tending our comrade, and in scouring the neighbouring woods and plains in search of wild animals.

As we were now approaching the country of the gorilla—although, indeed, it was still far distant—our minds began to run more upon that terrible creature than used to be the case; and our desire to fall in with it was increased by the strange accounts of its habits and its tremendous power that we received from the natives of this village, some of whom had crossed the desert and actually met with the gorilla face to face. More than once, while out hunting, I have been so taken up with this subject that I have been on the point of shooting a native who appeared unexpectedly before me, under the impression that he was a specimen of the animal on which my thoughts had been fixed.

One day about a week after our arrival, as I was sitting at the side of Jack’s couch relating to him the incidents of a hunt after a buffalo that Makarooroo and I had had the day before, Peterkin entered with a swaggering gait, and setting his rifle down in a corner, flung himself on the pile of skins that formed his couch.

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said he, with the look and tone of a man who feels that he has been unwarrantably misled—“I don’t believe there’s such a beast as a gorilla at all; now, that’s a fact.”

There was something so confident and emphatic in my comrade’s manner that, despite my well-grounded belief on that point, I felt a sinking at the heart. The bare possibility that, after all our trouble and toil and suffering in penetrating thus far towards the land which he is said to inhabit, we should find that there really existed no such creature as the gorilla was too terrible to think upon.

“Peterkin,” said I anxiously, “what do you mean?”

“I mean,” replied he slowly, “that Jack is the only living specimen of the gorilla in Africa.”

“Come, now, I see you are jesting.”

“Am I?” cried Peterkin savagely—“jesting, eh? That means expressing thoughts and opinions which are not to be understood literally. Oh, I would that I were sure that I am jesting! Ralph, it’s my belief, I tell you, that the gorilla is a regular sell—a great, big, unnatural hairy do!”

“But I saw the skeleton of one in London.”

“I don’t care for that. You may have been deceived, humbugged. Perhaps it was a compound of the bones of a buffalo and a chimpanzee.”

“Nay, that were impossible,” said I quickly; “for no one pretending to have any knowledge of natural history and comparative anatomy could be so grossly deceived.”

“What like was the skeleton, Ralph?” inquired Jack, who seemed to be rather amused by our conversation.

“It was nearly as tall as that of a medium-sized man—I should think about five feet seven or eight inches; but the amazing part about it was the immense size and thickness of its bones. Its shoulders were much broader than yours, Jack, and your chest is a mere child’s compared with that of the specimen of the gorilla that I saw. Its legs were very short—much shorter than those of a man; but its arms were tremendous—they were more than a foot longer than yours. In fact, if the brute’s legs were in the same proportion to its body as are those of a man, it would be a giant of ten or eleven feet high. Or, to take another view of it, if you were to take a robust and properly proportioned giant of that height, and cut down his legs until he stood about the height of an ordinary man, that would be a gorilla.”

“I don’t believe it,” cried Peterkin.

“Well, perhaps my simile is not quite so felicitous as—”

“I don’t mean that,” interrupted Peterkin; “I mean that I don’t believe there’s such a brute as a gorilla at all.”

“Why, what has made you so sceptical?” inquired Jack.

“The nonsense that these niggers have been telling me, through the medium of Mak as an interpreter; that is what has made me sceptical. Only think, they say that a gorilla is so strong that he can lift a man by the nape of the neck clean off the ground with one of his hind feet! Yes, they say he is in the habit of sitting on the lower branches of trees in lonely dark parts of the wood watching for prey, and when a native chances to pass by close enough he puts down his hind foot, seizes the wretched man therewith, lifts him up into the tree, and quietly throttles him. They don’t add whether or not he eats him afterwards, or whether he prefers him boiled or roasted. Now, I don’t believe that.”

“Neither do I,” returned Jack; “nevertheless the fact that these fellows recount such wonderful stories at all, is, to some extent, evidence in favour of their existence: for in such a country as this, where so many wonderful and horrible animals exist, men are not naturally tempted to invent new creatures; it is sufficient to satisfy their craving for the marvellous that they should merely exaggerate what does already exist.”

“Go to, you sophist! if what you say be true, and the gorilla turns out to be only an exaggerated chimpanzee or ring-tailed roarer, does not that come to the same thing as saying that there is no gorilla at all—always, of course, excepting yourself?”

“Credit yourself with a punched head,” said Jack, “and the account shall be balanced when I am sufficiently recovered to pay you off. Meanwhile, continue your account of what the niggers say about the gorilla.”

Peterkin assumed a look of offended dignity as he replied—

“Without deigning any rejoinder to the utterly absurd and totally irrelevant matter contained in the preliminary sentences of your last remark, I pass on to observe that the natives of these wilds hold the opinion that there is one species of the gorilla which is the residence of the spirits of defunct niggers, and that these fellows are known by their unusual size and ferocity.”

“Hold,” cried I, “until I get out my note-book. Now, Peterkin, no fibs.”

“Honour bright,” said he, “I’ll give it you just as I got it. These possessed brutes are never caught, and can’t be killed. (I only hope I may get the chance to try whether that be true or not.) They often carry off natives into the woods, where they pull out their toe and finger nails by the roots and then let them go; and they are said to be uncommonly fond of sugar-cane, which they steal from the fields of the natives sometimes in a very daring manner.”

“Is that all?” said I.

“All!” exclaimed my comrade. “How much more would you have? Do you suppose that the gorilla can do anything it likes—hang by its tail from the moon, or sit down on its nose and run round on its chin?”

“Massa Jack,” said Makarooroo, entering the hut and interrupting our conversation at this point, “de chief hims tell to me for to tell to you dat w’en you’s be fit for go-hid agin hims gib you cottle for sit upon.”

“Cottle, Mak! what’s cottle?” inquired Jack, with a puzzled look.

“Ho, massa, you know bery well; jist cottle—hoxes, you know.”

“Indeed, I don’t know,” replied Jack, still more puzzled.

“I’ve no doubt,” interposed Peterkin, “that he means cuttle, which is the short name for cuttle-fish, which, in such an inland place as this, must of course be hoaxes! But what do you mean, Mak? Describe the thing to us.”

Mak scratched his woolly pate, as if he were quite unable to explain himself.

“O massas, you be most stoopid dis yer day. Cottle not a ting; hims am a beast, wid two horn an’ one tail. Dere,” said he, pointing with animation to a herd of cattle that grazed near our hut, “dat’s cottle, or hoxes.”

We all laughed at this proposal.

“What!” cried Jack, “does he mean us to ride upon ‘hoxes’ as if they were horses?”

“Yis, massa, hims say dat. Hims hear long ago ob one missionary as hab do dat; so de chief he tink it bery good idea, an’ hims try too, an’ like it bery much; only hims fell off ebery tree steps an’ a’most broke all de bones in him’s body down to powder. But hims git up agin and fell hoff agin. Oh, hims like it bery much!”

“If we follow the chief’s example,” said I, laughing, “we shall scarcely be in a fit state to hunt gorillas at the end of our journey; but now I come to think of it, the plan seems to me not a bad one. You know a great part of our journey now lies over a comparatively desert country, where we shall be none the worse of a ride now and then on ox-back to relieve our limbs. I think the proposal merits consideration.”

“Right, Ralph,” said Jack.—“Go, Mak, and tell his majesty, or chieftainship, or his royal highness, with my compliments, that I am much obliged by the offer, and will consider it. Also give him this plug of tobacco; and see you don’t curtail its dimensions before it leaves your hand, you rascal.”

Our guide grinned as he left the hut to execute his mission, and we turned to converse on this new plan, which, the more we thought of it, seemed the more to grow in our estimation as most feasible.

“Now, lads, leave me,” said Jack, with a sigh, after we had chatted for more than an hour. “If I am to go through all that our worthy host seems to have suffered, it behoves me to get my frame into a fit state to stand it. I shall therefore try to sleep.”

So saying he turned round on his side, and we left him to his slumbers.

As it was still early in the afternoon, we two shouldered our rifles and strolled away into the woods, partly with the intention of taking a shot at anything that might chance to come in our way, but chiefly with the view of having a pleasant chat about our prospect of speedily reaching that goal of our ambition—the gorilla country.

“It seems to me,” observed Peterkin, as we walked side by side over an open grassy and flower-speckled plain that lay about a couple of miles distant from the village—“it seems to me that we shall never reach this far-famed country.”

“I have no doubt that we shall,” said I; “but tell me, Peterkin, do you really doubt the existence of the gorilla?”

“Well, since you do put it to me so very seriously, I can scarce tell what I believe. The fact is, that I’m such a sceptical wretch by nature that I find it difficult to believe anything unless I see it.”

I endeavoured to combat this very absurd state of mind in my companion by pointing out to him very clearly that if he