English essays -- 19th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs; London (England) -- Description and travel
The male, who was untouched, gave a howl that you might have heard
a league off; advanced towards us as if he would attack us, and then
turned and ran away with inconceivable celerity towards the wood.
We went up towards the fallen brutes. The little one by the female
appeared to be about two years old. It lay bleating and moaning on the
ground, stretching out its little hands, with movements and looks
so strangely resembling human, that my heart sickened with pity. The
female, who had been shot through both legs, could not move. She howled
most hideously when I approached the little one.
“We must be off,” said Rogers, “or the whole Gorilla race may be down
upon us.” “The little one is only shot in the leg,” I said. “I'll bind
the limb up, and we will carry the beast with us on board.”
The poor little wretch held up its leg to show it was wounded, and
looked to me with appealing eyes. It lay quite still whilst I looked for
and found the bullet, and, tearing off a piece of my shirt, bandaged
up the wound. I was so occupied in this business, that I hardly heard
Rogers cry “Run! run!” and when I looked up--
When I looked up, with a roar the most horrible I ever heard--a roar?
ten thousand roars--a whirling army of dark beings rushed by me.
Rogers, who had bullied me so frightfully during the voyage, and who
had encouraged my fatal passion for play, so that I own I owed him 1,500
dollars, was overtaken, felled, brained, and torn into ten thousand
pieces; and I dare say the same fate would have fallen on me, but that
the little Gorilla, whose wound I had dressed, flung its arms round
my neck (their arms, you know, are much longer than ours). And when an
immense gray Gorilla, with hardly any teeth, brandishing the trunk of a
gollyboshtree about sixteen feet long, came up to me roaring, the little
one squeaked out something plaintive, which, of course, I could not
understand; on which suddenly the monster flung down his tree, squatted
down on his huge hams by the side of the little patient, and began to
bellow and weep.
And now, do you see whom I had rescued? I had rescued the young Prince
of the Gorillas, who was out walking with his nurse and footman. The
footman had run off to alarm his master, and certainly I never saw a
footman run quicker. The whole army of Gorillas rushed forward to rescue
their prince, and punish his enemies. If the King Gorilla's emotion
was great, fancy what the queen's must have been when SHE came up! She
arrived, on a litter, neatly enough made with wattled branches, on which
she lay, with her youngest child, a prince of three weeks old.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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