"Come, now, I see you are jesting."

"Am I?" cried Peterkin savagely--"jesting, eh? That means expressing thoughts and opinions which are not to be understood literally. Oh, I would that I were sure that I am jesting! Ralph, it's my belief, I tell you, that the gorilla is a regular sell--a great, big, unnatural hairy _do_!"

"But I saw the skeleton of one in London."

"I don't care for that. You may have been deceived, humbugged. Perhaps it was a compound of the bones of a buffalo and a chimpanzee."

"Nay, that were impossible," said I quickly; "for no one pretending to have any knowledge of natural history and comparative anatomy could be so grossly deceived."

"What like was the skeleton, Ralph?" inquired Jack, who seemed to be rather amused by our conversation.

"It was nearly as tall as that of a medium-sized man--I should think about five feet seven or eight inches; but the amazing part about it was the immense size and thickness of its bones. Its shoulders were much broader than yours, Jack, and your chest is a mere child's compared with that of the specimen of the gorilla that I saw. Its legs were very short--much shorter than those of a man; but its arms were tremendous-- they were more than a foot longer than yours. In fact, if the brute's legs were in the same proportion to its body as are those of a man, it would be a giant of ten or eleven feet high. Or, to take another view of it, if you were to take a robust and properly proportioned giant of that height, and cut down his legs until he stood about the height of an ordinary man, _that_ would be a gorilla."

"I don't believe it," cried Peterkin.

"Well, perhaps my simile is not quite so felicitous as--"

"I don't mean that," interrupted Peterkin; "I mean that I don't believe there's such a brute as a gorilla at all."

"Why, what has made you so sceptical?" inquired Jack.

"The nonsense that these n.i.g.g.e.rs have been telling me, through the medium of Mak as an interpreter; that is what has made me sceptical.

Only think, they say that a gorilla is so strong that he can lift a man by the nape of the neck clean off the ground with one of his hind feet!

Yes, they say he is in the habit of sitting on the lower branches of trees in lonely dark parts of the wood watching for prey, and when a native chances to pa.s.s by close enough he puts down his hind foot, seizes the wretched man therewith, lifts him up into the tree, and quietly throttles him. They don't add whether or not he eats him afterwards, or whether he prefers him boiled or roasted. Now, I don't believe that."

"Neither do I," returned Jack; "nevertheless the fact that these fellows recount such wonderful stories at all, is, to some extent, evidence in favour of their existence: for in such a country as this, where so many wonderful and horrible animals exist, men are not naturally tempted to invent _new_ creatures; it is sufficient to satisfy their craving for the marvellous that they should merely exaggerate what does already exist."

"Go to, you sophist! if what you say be true, and the gorilla turns out to be only an exaggerated chimpanzee or ring-tailed roarer, does not that come to the same thing as saying that there is no gorilla at all-- always, of course, excepting yourself?"

"Credit yourself with a punched head," said Jack, "and the account shall be balanced when I am sufficiently recovered to pay you off. Meanwhile, continue your account of what the n.i.g.g.e.rs say about the gorilla."

Peterkin a.s.sumed a look of offended dignity as he replied--

"Without deigning any rejoinder to the utterly absurd and totally irrelevant matter contained in the preliminary sentences of your last remark, I pa.s.s on to observe that the natives of these wilds hold the opinion that there is one species of the gorilla which is the residence of the spirits of defunct n.i.g.g.e.rs, and that these fellows are known by their unusual size and ferocity."

"Hold," cried I, "until I get out my note-book. Now, Peterkin, no fibs."

"Honour bright," said he, "I'll give it you just as I got it. These _possessed_ brutes are never caught, and can't be killed. (I only hope I may get the chance to try whether that be true or not.) They often carry off natives into the woods, where they pull out their toe and finger nails by the roots and then let them go; and they are said to be uncommonly fond of sugar-cane, which they steal from the fields of the natives sometimes in a very daring manner."

"Is that all?" said I.

"All!" exclaimed my comrade. "How much more would you have? Do you suppose that the gorilla can do anything it likes--hang by its tail from the moon, or sit down on its nose and run round on its chin?"

"Ma.s.sa Jack," said Makarooroo, entering the hut and interrupting our conversation at this point, "de chief hims tell to me for to tell to you dat w'en you's be fit for go-hid agin hims gib you cottle for sit upon."

"Cottle, Mak! what's _cottle_?" inquired Jack, with a puzzled look.

"Ho, ma.s.sa, you know bery well; jist cottle--hoxes, you know."

"Indeed, I don't know," replied Jack, still more puzzled.

"I've no doubt," interposed Peterkin, "that he means cuttle, which is the short name for cuttle-fish, which, in such an inland place as this, must of course be hoaxes! But what do you mean, Mak? Describe the thing to us."

Mak scratched his woolly pate, as if he were quite unable to explain himself.

"O ma.s.sas, you be most stoopid dis yer day. Cottle not a ting; hims am a beast, wid two horn an' one tail. Dere," said he, pointing with animation to a herd of cattle that grazed near our hut, "dat's cottle, or hoxes."

We all laughed at this proposal.

"What!" cried Jack, "does he mean us to ride upon `hoxes' as if they were horses?"

"Yis, ma.s.sa, hims say dat. Hims hear long ago ob one missionary as hab do dat; so de chief he tink it bery good idea, an' hims try too, an'

like it bery much; only hims fell off ebery tree steps an' a'most broke all de bones in him's body down to powder. But hims git up agin and fell hoff agin. Oh, hims like it bery much!"

"If we follow the chief's example," said I, laughing, "we shall scarcely be in a fit state to hunt gorillas at the end of our journey; but now I come to think of it, the plan seems to me not a bad one. You know a great part of our journey now lies over a comparatively desert country, where we shall be none the worse of a ride now and then on ox-back to relieve our limbs. I think the proposal merits consideration."

"Right, Ralph," said Jack.--"Go, Mak, and tell his majesty, or chieftainship, or his royal highness, with my compliments, that I am much obliged by the offer, and will consider it. Also give him this plug of tobacco; and see you don't curtail its dimensions before it leaves your hand, you rascal."

Our guide grinned as he left the hut to execute his mission, and we turned to converse on this new plan, which, the more we thought of it, seemed the more to grow in our estimation as most feasible.

"Now, lads, leave me," said Jack, with a sigh, after we had chatted for more than an hour. "If I am to go through all that our worthy host seems to have suffered, it behoves me to get my frame into a fit state to stand it. I shall therefore try to sleep."

So saying he turned round on his side, and we left him to his slumbers.

As it was still early in the afternoon, we two shouldered our rifles and strolled away into the woods, partly with the intention of taking a shot at anything that might chance to come in our way, but chiefly with the view of having a pleasant chat about our prospect of speedily reaching that goal of our ambition--the gorilla country.

"It seems to me," observed Peterkin, as we walked side by side over an open gra.s.sy and flower-speckled plain that lay about a couple of miles distant from the village--"it seems to me that we shall _never_ reach this far-famed country."

"I have no doubt that we shall," said I; "but tell me, Peterkin, do you really doubt the existence of the gorilla?"

"Well, since you do put it to me so very seriously, I can scarce tell what I believe. The fact is, that I'm such a sceptical wretch by nature that I find it difficult to believe anything unless I see it."

I endeavoured to combat this very absurd state of mind in my companion by pointing out to him very clearly that if he were to act upon such a principle at all times, he would certainly disbelieve many of the commonest facts in nature, and give full credit, on the other hand, to the most outrageous absurdities.

"For instance," said I, "you would believe that every conjurer swallows fire, and smoke, and penknives, and rabbits, because you _see_ him do it; and you would disbelieve the existence of the pyramids, because you don't happen to have seen them."

"Ralph," said my companion seriously, "don't go in too deep, else I shall be drowned!"

I was about to make some reply, when my attention was attracted by a very singular appearance of moisture at the foot of a fig-tree under which we were pa.s.sing. Going up to it I found that there was a small puddle of clear water near the trunk. This occasioned me much surprise, for no rain had fallen in that district since our arrival, and probably there had been none for a long period before that. The ground everywhere, except in the large rivers and water-courses, was quite dry, insomuch that, as I have said, this little solitary pool (which was not much larger than my hand) occasioned us much surprise.

"How comes it there?" said I.

"That's more than I can tell," replied Peterkin. "Perhaps there's a small spring at the root of the tree."

"Perhaps there is," said I, searching carefully round the spot in all directions; but I found nothing to indicate the presence of a spring-- and, indeed, when I came to think of it, if there had been a spring there would also certainly have been a water-course leading from it.

But such was not the case. Presently I observed a drop of water fall into the pool, and looking up, discovered that it fell from a cl.u.s.ter of insects that clung to a branch close over our heads.

I at once recognised this water-distilling insect as an old acquaintance. I had seen it before in England, although of a considerably smaller size than this African one. My companion also seemed to be acquainted with it, for he exclaimed--