Page:Guy Boothby - The Beautiful White Devil.djvu/131

 five miles of me, my surprise may be better imagined than described. But it was nothing to the terror that seized me when I looked round to discover who my friend really was.

Standing behind me, and seeming to fill the whole universe, was an enormous orang-outang—the largest I have ever seen or heard of. His wicked eyes gleamed down at me, his teeth protruded ferociously from beneath his bluey gums, while his great hairy arms, more powerful than any coal-heaver's, were opened as if to embrace me. I looked once, and then—how I managed it I shall never be able to tell—wriggled myself out of his clutches like an eel, and, leaving my gun behind me, took to my heels. But before I had proceeded ten yards the great beast was after me, rolling from side to side in his stride like a drunken sailor on a pavement. So close was he behind me that it seemed as if I could almost feel his breath upon the short hair of my poll. One thing is very certain—I ran then as I bad never run in my life before, and as I shall probably never run again. Hardly conscious where I was going, knowing only that I must get out of his reach, I fled across the open space with the intention of making for the plain where I had stalked my deer; but the ape headed me off, and would have caught me had I not stopped at a tree and dodged quickly round it. Then back I went in the direction I had just come, making this time for the opposite jungle. But once more he headed me off and drove me back on my tracks. My agony was intolerable, my breath was almost spent, and 1 had begun to give myself up for lost, when I espied a tree on the further side, with a branch close to the