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
bloodcurdling 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