mber, 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 I looked 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 I owed 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 s