there should be opportunity for very careful and deliberate aim. The shaggy head was withdrawn—then a glimpse of the great silvery back and we saw no more. We went into the beastly chasm and up again to where he had been.
The guides were too eager; I had constantly to hold them back while I stopped to breathe. We took up his trail. He led us on to the crest of that ridge and then along the "hogback" till we were about one thousand feet above camp. Then as the trail swung along the other slope at the level we heard one short roar ahead of us. The thrill of it! I had actually heard the roar of a bull gorilla! It seemed perhaps two hundred yards ahead. I thought it indicated alarm and that he would lead us a merry chase. We continued along the trail slowly, for it led along a slope so steep that without the rank vegetation we could not have stuck on.
We had gone not more than one hundred and fifty yards from the time we heard the roar, with the gun-bearer just ahead and the second gun and guides behind. The gun-bearer stopped, looking up into the dense tangle above us. It was still as death—no sound of movement could I hear. The gun was in his left hand; with his right he clung to the bank just beside him. Behind there was a four-inch tree between me and a straight drop of twenty feet, then a slide of fifty feet to the edge of a chasm more than 200 feet deep. I leaned my back against this tree that I might straighten up for a better look. The gun-bearer turned slowly and passed me the .475. As I
