"I always am!" I observed, thinking of the air of indifference
displayed by Gran'pa when I had once been chased by a snake in the
jungle.
"Don't goad me, George! It was perfectly natural to try if the little
fellow was amenable to ordinary human kindness?"
Stringer had joined us by now and expressed the opinion that all
gorillas, especially male, were absolutely untamable and that it was a
waste of time to appeal to their better nature, because they had none.
"We shall see. . . ." said Gran'pa mysteriously.
Unfortunately, we didn't; for the next day Little Willie performed the
same gymnastic feat on Oakley. The only difference was that, instead of
procuring a piece of cloth as a reward, he removed a small portion of
Oakley's flesh.
So much for a newly-captured baby gorilla as a possible pet.
As a decoy, however, Little Willie was much more promising, and a week
or so after his compulsory enlistment in the services of the aged we
took him out to his native jungle again.
Staking him in the centre of a small clearing in the forest--as near
as possible to the new gorilla haunt discovered by Nchago--Croft and I
donned our gorilla garb and retired to the cage.
Instead of sitting in the open and calling for mates, we intended
giving Little Willie the honor of notifying the females of his race
that he was in dire need of help and comfort.
He did this admirably and almost incessantly, while several yards away
from him lay a circle of half-a-dozen hidden nozzles connected with the
"gas-works."
Exactly what he said was not known to us. He may have been merely
complaining of the great difficulty of escaping to the shelter of the
forest. Or, he may have been shouting out the names of his friends and
relations.
Once or twice, he made that pathetic noise of "_Hoo! . . . Hoo! . . ._"
as if pondering on the tenderness of his years and bemoaning the
harshness of life.
Still as death, we sat huddled in our cage, watching and waiting!
The minutes dragged by into hours. Noon came, with its strange silence
and stifling heat. A long way off, we heard the bark of a male gorilla.
Later, the scream of a startled female.
As this last sound reached him, Little Willie gave a loud cry of
distress and tugged wildly at his chain. Then silence again.
I looked at my watch. In two hours' time we should have to start our
flight back to Corisco.
Stealthily and silently, Croft and I partook of food and drink. We
needed it. So, no doubt, did poor Little Willie; but it would have been
very unwise to have left our cage in order to feed him. In the gloomy
shelter of the surrounding bush, we knew not how many pairs of eyes
might even now be watching--how many gorilla hearts might be on the
point of responding to his plaintive appeals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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