live gorillas. The others followed her not in anger but in fear and because they accepted her lead without realizing that it was involuntary. If their charge had been aimed at me they had plenty of time to knock me off the mountain side before I could get up and shoot again, and the Negroes, being armed only with spears and hanging on a precipitous slope, were almost as defenceless.
I began to feel a good deal of confidence in my theory that the gorilla is not a ferocious beast, although I was gaining the utmost respect for his size and power. If being molested by man would make gorillas ferocious and aggressive, these animals should have been excessively dangerous, for within a very short time the Prince of Sweden had shot fourteen of them, and Barnes had killed several more. The very animals that I followed had probably heard the guns of these other men. Yet I could see no signs of ferocity. When I came up with the old male that I had killed first, he had run back and forth on the hillside barking in protest or surprise at my intrusion just as I have seen little monkeys run back and forth on a limb and bark; but of his having savage intentions against me I saw no sign. Of the two I was the savage and the aggressor. In the case of the female I had just shot, the same was true, even though she was accompanied by her baby. She evidently preferred to get away if possible. Cornered, I think and hope she would fight for her young.
What became of the last two animals I do not know. The black fur ball that I had fired at was,
