10 Gorilla Adventure Page 2

  ‘No path,’ Tieg insisted. ‘Animals don’t need paths.’

  Roger was not convinced. He wandered away from the group. He walked along the edge of the meadow, peering into the bushes, parting them here and there to make sure that they did not hide a trail. Fumbling among a shower of yellow hagenia blossoms, he startled an impala gazelle. It did not run away, but leaped soaring twenty feet before it touched ground. In a case like this, Tieg was right. The gazelle did not need a path, and did not make one.

  But how about buffaloes, elephants, rhinos, and such -heavy beasts that plodded along with all four feet pressing the ground? They wouldn’t soar over bushes. They would plough through them or around them, and those that came after would follow those that had gone before, and the result would be a trail. But the thick shrubbery that grew up along the forest’s edge might hide the entrance to the trail.

  So he kept pushing aside the curtain of foliage, the young tree ferns, die bamboo, the strange wild celery six feet high, the blackberry bushes.

  And at last, there it was. Concealed behind the fast-growing screen was the beginning of a path, deeply stamped with the sharp hooves of buffalo, the broad pads of elephants, and many other imprints unfamiliar to Roger.

  ‘I found a trail.’ he shouted, and the others came to join the young explorer.

  ‘Good for you,’ Hal said, and Joro gave him a smile that was all the more brilliant because of the gleam of very white teeth in a very black face.

  Only Tieg was not pleased, and followed sulkily as they struck off along the trail.

  To Joro, the trail was a book. It told him what animals had passed this way. ‘Warthog,’ he said. ‘Waterbuck. Kongoni. Topi. Buffalo. Bush pig.’ He stopped and looked about. ‘Watch both sides - and above. A leopard has been here within the last half hour.’

  They went on, warily, until Joro said, ‘You can take it easy now. No more leopard prints. Only hyenas and jackals.’

  He stopped again and bent down to study the ground. Tieg came up beside him and looked at what he had found.

  ‘No animal made that,’ Tieg said ‘One of your men must have wandered across the trail here.’

  It did look like a human footprint. At one end of the print, the stamp of five toes was plainly visible.

  ‘But,’ Hal said, ‘look at the big toe. Far away from the other four. It sticks out to the side, all alone. No man’s foot is shaped that way.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Tieg. ‘Feet that have never worn shoes spread out.’

  Roger’s sharp eyes had found something else. ‘Joro,’ he said, ‘how does a gorilla walk?’

  ‘Well, he can stand up like a man. But he generally walks along on all fours. His feet are pretty flat on the ground. But his hands are not. He keeps his hands doubled up into fists. He walks on his knuckles. The thumb is not used so all you see is the print of four knuckles.’

  ‘Like these?’ Roger said, pointing out a row of four deep dents in the ground.

  ‘That’s it,’ cried Joro, much excited. ‘That’s it.’ He looked about him to make sure that the great ape was not hiding in the bushes. Then he looked back at the print. ‘He must be a big fellow.’ He pressed his own knuckles into the ground. His row of dents was three inches long. The other print stretched a good six inches.

  ‘Boy!’ exclaimed Roger. ‘He must have hands like hams. ‘I’d hate to be swatted by one of those.’

  Chapter 3

  Gog, the giant

  Joro was carefully examining the ground. ‘He went on up this path,’ he said. ‘Let’s follow him. But be very quiet These prints are fresh - he can’t be very far away.’

  They went on, careful not to step on any twig that might crack underfoot. After about a quarter of a mile, Joro stopped.

  ‘He left the trail here,’ Joro whispered. He stood still and listened. He evidently heard something. The boys heard it too - a sound like dripping of water from leaves after a storm. But there had been no storm. The bushes were dry. The sound might come from a brook running over stones. No, it couldn’t be that, because it wasn’t continuous. It came and went, began and stopped.

  Then there was another sound - a voice - a deep, contented muttering as of a man talking to himself.

  Joro signalled the others to come on and as silently as a ghost he left the trail and followed the footprints through the bushes. Whenever the voice stopped, he stopped. He stood like a statue until he heard the muttering again or the tinkle of water.

  Now they must be very close to the source of these curious sounds. Joro raised his hand. They halted and peered through the bushes.

  Little light came down through the trees. In the half-dark they caught the glint of water. There was a small brook, but it did not babble down over stones. It was as still as a pool. And yet the water sound continued.

  They heard the voice again, like the purr of a big cat in a barrel.

  ‘There he is,’ whispered Hal, pointing.

  ‘Just a native, after all,’ said Tieg.

  ‘What a whopping big fellow,’ Roger whispered.

  The great black fellow sat on his haunches at the edge of the stream. He was drinking, but not the way an animal drinks. Nearly every sort of animal drinks by putting its mouth down into the water. So it seemed pretty plain that this must be a man, for he drank like a man, first brushing away the leaves and twigs that lay on the surface. Then, instead of lowering his head, he scooped up the water, using his hands as a cup, and, sitting up straight, he drank.

  A little of the water leaked between his fingers and splashed on the surface of the brook. That explained the tinkling or dripping sound the men had heard.

  Then he talked again to himself.

  ‘Do you understand what he’s saying?’ Hal whispered to Joro.

  Joro shook his head. ‘It isn’t Swahili. Must be some Congo dialect.’

  The black shadow, done with drinking, stood up. He towered almost seven feet tall.

  ‘Must be Watussi,’ Tieg guessed.

  Hal was half convinced. The land of the Watussi, the world’s tallest humans, was not far away.

  But Hal had collected animals in Watussi country. ‘He can’t be a Watussi,’ he whispered. ‘The Watussi are skinny. Tall and thin. This fellow must be five feet around. I’ll bet be weighs seven hundred pounds if he weighs an ounce.’

  The monster turned so they could see his profile. Now they could get a real idea of the size of that tremendous head, the beetling brows, the fiat nose, the huge projecting jaws, the retreating chin.

  There was no doubt about it - they were looking at a gorilla, and a great one. Most male gorillas, Hal knew from his studies, stood some five or six feet tall and weighed from five hundred to six hundred pounds. A lowland gorilla in the San Diego zoo tipped the scales at five hundred and eight-five, and another at six hundred and eighteen.

  A gorilla that had been killed in the Forest of Bambio near the Congo River in 1920, and whose photograph was published in a French scientific journal, measured nine feet four inches. But it was a freak and nothing like it had ever been heard of since.

  The monster they were now looking at was the greatest living creature on two legs that they had ever seen.

  ‘Looks like Gog,’ Hal whispered.

  Roger knew what he meant. In the Guildhall in London they had seen that huge wooden statue of Gog. The legend was that there used to be a race of giants on earth. Gog was supposed to be the last of these giants. And the monster that stood before them now looked like the giant Gog. He too, perhaps, was one of the last of his race. When the remaining mountain gorillas were wiped out, there would be no more man-like giants on earth.

  Hal mentally pinned the name Gog on the giant that stood before them.

  He could imagine Gog walking out of the shadows into the full glare of the Ringling Circus - how ten thousand heads would lean forward, how men would gasp, how girls would scream.

  A shaft of sun broke through the clouds and brought out the monster
in sharp relief. For the first time they could see that he was not all black. Down the middle of his back ran a streak of silver. Except for these almost white hairs, all the hair on his body was black and stood out as if electrified.

  Why had not the silverback noticed his audience peering through the bushes? The average animal would have seen them or heard them or smelled them. But not the gorilla.

  That was another thing that made him like man. The gorilla is as clever as man in some ways, but also as stupid as man. His senses of sight, hearing, and smell are neither better nor worse than man’s.

  But in size and strength, thought Hal, this giant left man far behind. How would they capture him? Four men certainly could not do it. It was a job for the whole crew. He started back towards the trail and the others followed. They must move fast - their prize might wander away before they could bring the crew.

  Once on the trail, they broke into a dog-trot. Roger was so busy glancing left and right that he almost stumbled.

  ‘Watch your step,’ Tieg said.

  ‘I was wondering where his family is,’ Roger said. ‘Ill bet it’s near by.’

  Another ten minutes of running, then Roger said, ‘See that open spot under the big trees? I’m going to sidetrack and take a look at it. Then I’ll catch up with you,’

  He dodged into the bushes and a moment later called, ‘Come back. Here it is.’

  The others joined him. They crept up quietly, but there was no need of that Here was the family, but they were not waiting for their lord’s return.

  Two females and a half-grown male lay on the ground, quite dead. Their bodies were still warm. Blood trickled from spear wounds.

  From far away in the jungle came a high-pitched scream. ‘Baby gorilla,’ Joro guessed.

  He examined the ground. It was trampled with footprints - and these footprints were human.

  It was not difficult to figure out what had happened. A gang of natives had attacked the family, hoping to take the baby alive. The other members of the family had desperately defended the youngster and so had met their death. Three animals had been killed to capture one.

  If there had been four hundred gorillas in the Virunga country, now there were only three hundred and ninety-seven. There were strict laws against killing these animals. Scores of other animal species had disappeared from the face of the earth because they had been hunted to the death by man. If this sort of murder went on, the mountain gorilla would join the gone and forgotten.

  Chapter 4

  The bullet

  The native gang had evidently made off with the baby of the family. Why?

  ‘Why didn’t they take a big one?’ Roger wondered.

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t know how,’ Hal said. ‘It was easier to kill the large ones, then grab the baby.’

  ‘But if they intend to sell it they won’t get as much for it,’ Roger said.

  ‘Ten thousand dollars. The same price as for a big one.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Roger objected.

  ‘Yes it does. Figure it out for yourself. If you were running a zoo, which would you rather have - a big gorilla that would perhaps last only ten years more, or a little one that you could have on exhibit for its full life-span of thirty years?’

  ‘Well,’ said Roger, ‘I’d like to have both - a big one so that people could see what a giant gorilla looks like, and a little one that would live a long time.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s why they’re worth the same money.’

  ‘Okay,’ Roger said. ‘But here’s another puzzle. Why is it forbidden to kill gorillas but you can get a permit to take them alive?’

  ‘Because a dead gorilla is one gorilla less in the world. But if you take a live gorilla and put it in a zoo you haven’t reduced the number of gorillas. In fact, you are doing the gorillas a favour - because they live better and live longer in a well-kept zoo than they would in the jungle where they have so many enemies. Some people say that animals pine away in a zoo. That’s true in some cases - but generally it’s the other way round - the animal is not at all unhappy to be safe and well-fed, cured of his diseases if he has any, and entertained by watching the funny humans who come to look at him.’

  ‘Listen,’ Roger said.

  There was a crackling in the bushes, then out stepped the giant they had seen beside the stream. He was still talking to himself in a low, contented voice.

  He stopped short when he saw what had happened to his family. Then his voice changed to an agonized aoo, aoo, aoo. He ran forward and stooped over the body of the young male, probably his son. Then he dropped between his two wives. With his great hands he tried to stop the blood that still trickled from their wounds. He shook them as if trying to bring them back to consciousness. Then he put one great hairy arm around each, drew them close to him and rocked back and forth, moaning pitifully.

  Suddenly there was a change. The giant dropped the two warm dead bodies and leaped to his feet. He looked all about him and one could guess the thought in his mind, ‘Who did this?’

  His eyes came to rest on the men not too well concealed in the bushes. He let out a blood-curdling scream that echoed back from the crags of Karisimbi, the next volcano. It was so chilling a sound that it numbed the nerves and the men stood as if paralysed.

  Gog beat upon the ground with the palms of his hands. What hands! Each as big as a baseball glove. He began to walk towards the men, bellowing as he came, and slapping the great drum of his chest.

  The men stood like statues, their hearts thumping. Their first impulse was to turn and run. But they knew very well that this would only invite an attack. Their only chance was to stand firm and out-bluff the beast.

  If he behaved in true gorilla fashion he would come within perhaps ten feet of them, then stop, and turn aside.

  But the giant Gog did not stick to the rules of the game. His natural fear of man was wiped out by his rage and grief over the slaughter of his family.

  The expression on the monster’s face was enough to chill your blood. It was not just because the wide-open mouth showed teeth as big as a lion’s. The face was terrible because it was so like the face of a man when he is in a deadly rage.

  Hal and Roger had been charged by other animals, and that was bad enough, but this was more terrifying. A charging rhino’s face is completely without expression. The features of the buffalo are the same whether he is nibbling grass or coming to kill. A hippo may be full of fury but his pig-like eyes don’t show it. A charging elephant spreads his ears and raises his trunk, but there is no change in his face. The face of a charging lion, except for his open jaws, is calm and ordinary. So it is throughout the animal kingdom - until you come to the great apes. They alone, and that other animal, man, have a face that can truly express their emotions.

  But even man, no matter how angry, does not smell like an angry gorilla. A slight breeze brought the odour to Roger’s nostrils.

  ‘He smells like burning rubber,’ Roger said.

  Gog spread his huge hairy arms so that no one might escape him. The arm reach was a good eight feet. The shoulder muscles heaved and it was clear that one of those enormous hands could twist a man’s head off.

  The hairs on the ape’s forehead twitched up and down and Roger felt the hair on his own neck do something like it.

  Tieg’s huge body was trembling like a leaf. This was actually the first mountain gorilla he had ever seen. All he had told the boys about gorillas he had picked up from men who had hunted them. He knew nothing about them first-hand.

  So it was natural for him to do the wrong thing.

  He bent down, grabbed a rock, and threw it with all bis strength.

  It struck the monster full in the chest but had no more effect upon him than if he had been struck by a feather.

  The ape picked it up and threw it back. That again reminded the boys of the stories about the great Gog who fought by hurling rocks at his enemies.

  The rock caught Tieg in the stomach and doubled him up.<
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  The gorilla did not stop at ten feet nor at five feet nor at one. A sideways slap of his left arm laid Roger and Joro flat on the ground and bis right arm did the same for Hal.

  He reserved special treatment for Tieg. He picked up the big fellow and flung him into a tree where he landed on a branch twelve feet up, then fell to the ground.

  Tieg drew a revolver and fired.

  The bullet found its mark but did not fell the beast. He clutched bis shoulder, then turned and disappeared into the woods.

  Hal bent over the unconscious body of Roger. He felt his pulse’ made sure the boy was breathing.

  ‘He’ll come round,’ he said and, sure enough, after a few minutes Roger opened his eyes and inquired weakly, ‘What happened to me?’

  His tough young body survived a blow that would have killed someone who had not been hardened as Roger had been by many adventures in the African bush.

  The men picked themselves up and stumbled in a sort of daze long the path towards the cabin. Hal looked curiously at Tieg.

  ‘I thought you said not to carry a gun.’

  Tieg was embarrassed. ‘Oh, that,’ he said. ‘Well, you see, I thought it was just an extra precaution.’

  ‘But I thought you said you weren’t afraid of gorillas.’

  ‘Afraid? Who’s afraid? I just thought I ought to be ready to protect you in case of trouble. You were very lucky that I did bring it along. I saved your lives and I expect a little gratitude for that.’

  Hal smiled and let the big coward enjoy his feeling of self-importance.

  Roger kept glancing back. After he had done this several times his brother asked, ‘What’s the matter, kid?’

  ‘I have a nasty feeling that we’re being followed.’

  Hal looked back but could see nothing - nothing but trees. Perhaps his brother was imagining things. Perhaps he was still suffering from the shock of having been knocked unconscious by one swipe of the great Gog’s mighty arm.

  They came out into the clearing and walked through the flowers to the cabin. Here at last with their thirty men around them they felt safe.