he unaccountable sounds above referred to. As he stood there
uttering roar upon roar--apparently with the view of screwing up his
courage to attack us--displaying his great canine teeth, and advancing
slowly, step by step, I felt a mingling of powerful emotions such as I
had never felt before in all my life, and such as cannot by any
possibility be adequately described.

I felt quite self-possessed, however, and stood beside my comrades with
my rifle ready and my finger on the trigger.

"Now!" whispered Peterkin. But Jack did not move.

"Now!" said he again, more anxiously, as the immense brute advanced,
beating its chest and roaring, to within eight yards of us. Still Jack
did not move, and I observed that it was as much as Peterkin could do to
restrain himself.

As it took the next step, and appeared about to spring, Jack pulled the
trigger. The cap alone exploded! Like a flash of light the other
trigger was pulled; it also failed! some moisture must have got into the
nipples in loading. Almost as quick as thought Jack hurled his piece at
the brute with a force that seemed to me irresistible. The butt struck
it full in the chest, but the rifle was instantly caught in its iron
gripe. At that moment Peterkin fired, and the gorilla dropped like a
stone, uttering a heavy groan as it fell prone with its face to the
earth--not, however, before it had broken Jack's rifle across, and
twisted the barrel as if it had been merely a piece of wire!

"That was a narrow escape, Jack," said I seriously, after we had
recovered from the state of agitation into which this scene had thrown
us.

"Indeed it was; and thanks to Peterkin's ever-ready rifle that it was an
escape at all. What a monstrous brute!"

"Much bigger than the first one," said Peterkin.--"Where is your
measure, Ralph? Out with it."

I pulled out my measure, and applying it to the prostrate carcass, found
that the gorilla we had now shot was five feet eight inches in height,
and proportionately large round the chest. It seemed to be a mass of
sinews and hard muscles, and as I gazed at its massive limbs I could
well imagine that it had strength sufficient to perform many, at least,
if not all of the wonderful feats ascribed to it by the natives.

Shortly after the death of the gorilla, night settled down upon the
scene, so we hurried back towards our camp, where we arrived much
exhausted, yet greatly elated, by our successful day's sport.

I spent a