DOMESTICATING MY GORILLA. 65 



hungry he called me with a cry pitched to a special key 

 which he used for me alone. But woe to me if I hap- 

 pened to get too near him ! He would make a quick 

 snatch at my arm or leg, and I nearly always left a piece 

 of my clothing in his possession. I saw clearly that 

 these coverings were not what he was really after, and 

 that he would gladly have buried his teeth in my flesh, — 

 an end which I took precious good care he should not 

 accomplish. 



Every day the king repeated to me his certainty that 

 I could do nothing with the brute, and that, as had been 

 proved time and again by the natives, he was sure to die 

 within a month. On the twenty-first day of his captivity 

 Joseph refused all food, crouching in one corner of his 

 cage, his eyes dull and mournful, seeming to regard 

 everything that went on round him without the least 

 interest. He seemed to be suffering from a violent fever, 

 for every few minutes he would dart to his water-butt 

 and drain it to the last drop. Now I could touch him 

 without his trying to bite me. It even looked as if he 

 regarded me, from his dim, half-closed eyes, with less 

 fierceness, and I felt a kind of remorse at having deprived 

 the poor fellow of his free forest life. I took him out of 

 his cage and laid him on a bed of moss and leaves in the 

 sunlight, and he allowed me to do so, like a child, without 

 making any attempt to escape or bite. It was the fifth 

 day of his sickness when he began to toss about rest- 

 lessly, and every now and then was seized with a fit of 



