第62章

At last, on the 23rd September, as I was in advance with Charles Rogers, second mate, and two natives with bows and arrows, we were crossing a great plain skirted by a forest, when we saw emerging from a ravine what I took to be three negroes--a very tall one, one of a moderate size, and one quite little.

Our native guide shrieked out some words in their language, of which Charles Rogers knew something.I thought it was the advance of the negroes whom we expected."No!" said Rogers (who swore dreadfully in conversation), "it is the Gorillas!" And he fired both barrels of his gun, bringing down the little one first, and the female afterwards.

The male, who was untouched, gave a howl that you might have heard a league off; advanced towards us as if he would attack us, and then turned and ran away with inconceivable celerity towards the wood.

We went up towards the fallen brutes.The little one by the female appeared to be about two years old.It lay bleating and moaning on the ground, stretching out its little hands, with movements and looks so strangely resembling human, that my heart sickened with pity.The female, who had been shot through both legs, could not move.She howled most hideously when I approached the little one.

"We must be off," said Rogers, "or the whole Gorilla race may be down upon us." "The little one is only shot in the leg," I said.

"I'll bind the limb up, and we will carry the beast with us on board."The poor little wretch held up its leg to show it was wounded, and looked to me with appealing eyes.It lay quite still whilst Ilooked for and found the bullet, and, tearing off a piece of my shirt, bandaged up the wound.I was so occupied in this business, that I hardly heard Rogers cry "Run! run!" and when I looked up--When I looked up, with a roar the most horrible I ever heard--a roar? ten thousand roars--a whirling army of dark beings rushed by me.Rogers, who had bullied me so frightfully during the voyage, and who had encouraged my fatal passion for play, so that I own Iowed him 1,500 dollars, was overtaken, felled, brained, and torn into ten thousand pieces; and I dare say the same fate would have fallen on me, but that the little Gorilla, whose wound I had dressed, flung its arms round my neck (their arms, you know, are much longer than ours).And when an immense gray Gorilla, with hardly any teeth, brandishing the trunk of a gollyboshtree about sixteen feet long, came up to me roaring, the little one squeaked out something plaintive, which, of course, I could not understand;on which suddenly the monster flung down his tree, squatted down on his huge hams by the side of the little patient, and began to bellow and weep.

And now, do you see whom I had rescued? I had rescued the young Prince of the Gorillas, who was out walking with his nurse and footman.The footman had run off to alarm his master, and certainly I never saw a footman run quicker.The whole army of Gorillas rushed forward to rescue their prince, and punish his enemies.If the King Gorilla's emotion was great, fancy what the queen's must have been when SHE came up! She arrived, on a litter, neatly enough made with wattled branches, on which she lay, with her youngest child, a prince of three weeks old.