"Nonsense! People have been dying from old age ever since the world began." "So they have from lock-jaw, and consumption, and malaria, and a thousand other complaints." "That's no comparison. Death from old age is inevitable and . . ." "Is it? What about me?" "But sooner or later . . ." I said bluntly. "Yes! I expect I shall . . . sooner or later. But the chief thing is that I haven't yet. I _might_ have died of diphtheria nearly fifty years ago; but medical science saved me. I might have died of malaria once--but for quinine. Everyone who has reached my age--or only half of it--has probably been saved at least once in his life. But it's only a probability, George. In the majority of cases one cannot tell for certain. With these glands, however, it is different. I know that I've been rescued from death as surely as when a life buoy is thrown to a drowning man. When the liner sinks in mid-ocean it's the number of floatable commodities that determine the number of the saved. A man who destroyed a life buoy at such a moment would be guilty of murder. And that's precisely the attitude we must adopt towards this gorilla hunt. A gorilla shot dead in the heart of Africa is a man murdered somewhere at home. We _must_ catch them alive. . . ." "I suppose it's possible," I said. "Otherwise, how did they get our friend Alfred--and the one in the Zoo?" "Naturally it's been done before, but not on a big enough scale. I very much doubt if more than fifty or sixty of them have been captured alive during the last century. That's much too slow for us. We shall want them . . . in hundreds a month, at least. . . ." "Sort of round them up, like rebels," I suggested. "Flippantly put," he answered, dryly, "but substantially correct." The insight required for such a gigantic undertaking was so utterly beyond me that I simply could not treat the matter seriously. "I don't quite understand the aeroplane part," I said. "Do you intend flying over the jungle and lassoing them--or, what?" "Don't be feeble, George. The aeroplanes are merely for _getting_ there. Where it took weeks for other men to travel a hundred miles through the African jungle, we shall manage it in as many hours. We could leave Gaboon at eight in the morning, say . . ." "Where on earth is Gaboon?" He treated the interruption--which was actually inspired by a genuine thirst for knowledge--with contempt. "You'll find it on any map of Equatorial Africa," he answered quietly. "As I was saying, we could leave there at eight in the morning and be in the heart of the gorilla country by ten o'clock at the latest. I intend making Gaboon the headquarters."