26 THE GORILLA. 



they were raising their guns to fire, she perceived them. 

 The shots struck her, and she fell mortally wounded. 



At the noise of the discharge, the little gorilla threw 

 himself on his mother, clasped her with his arms, and 

 hid himself in her bosom. But the triumphant cries 

 of the hunters recalled him to himself, and he left 

 the body of his mother, rushed up a tree, and scram- 

 bled nearly to the top, where he sat howling at them 

 savagely. 



The blacks were much embarrassed, being unwilling 

 either to shoot him or to expose themselves to his bites. 

 At last they agreed to cut down the tree ; and profiting 

 by the surprise of the little monster when he fell, they 

 threw a sack over his head, which, however, did not 

 prevent his giving one of them a fearful bite on the 

 hand, and another had a piece taken out of his leg. 



As this little beast, although very small, and the 

 merest baby for age ? was astonishingly strong, and as 

 nothing would assuage his fury, they scarcely knew how 

 to carry him. They finished by fixing his neck in a 

 forked stick in such a way as to keep him at a safe 

 distance, at the same time preventing his escape ; and 

 in this fashion they led him to M. du Chaillu. "I 

 cannot," he writes, "describe the emotions which I 

 felt. That single moment recompensed me for all the 

 fatigue and suffering I had undergone in Africa." 



The excitement in the village was intense. The 



