HUNTING GORILLAS 207 
there should be opportunity for very careful and de- 
liberate aim. The shaggy head was withdrawn— 
then a glimpse of the great silvery back and we saw 
no more. We went into the beastly chasm and up 
again to where he had been. 
The guides were too eager; I had constantly to hold 
them back while I stopped to breathe. We took up 
his trail. He led us on to the crest of that ridge and 
then along the “hogback”’ till we were about one 
thousand feet above camp. Then as the trail swung 
along the other slope at the level we heard one short 
roar ahead of us. The thrill of it! I had actually 
heard the roar of a bull gorilla! It seemed perhaps 
two hundred yards ahead. I thought it indicated 
alarm and that he would lead us a merry chase. We 
continued along the trail slowly, for it led along a 
slope so steep that without the rank vegetation we 
could not have stuck on. | 
We had gone not more than one hundred and fifty 
yards from the time we heard the roar, with the gun- 
bearer just ahead and the second gun and guides 
behind. The gun-bearer stopped, looking up into 
the dense tangle above us. It was still as death—no 
sound of movement could I hear. The gun was in 
his left hand; with his right he clung to the bank just 
beside him. Behind there was a four-inch tree be- 
tween me and a straight drop of twenty feet, then 
a slide of fifty feet to the edge of a chasm more than 
200 feet deep. I leaned my back against this tree that 
I might straighten up for a better look. The gun- 
bearer turned slowly and passed me the .475. As I 
