Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/230

 by the feet of the beast, enormous human-looking tracks showing the marks of a heel which no other living thing in the world but the gorilla and man has. I gave the boy back the Springfield and took the big .475 elephant gun. And although the next bit of going was hard and wearing, I carried the gun myself and trusted it to no gun boy.

We followed the trail for two hours, and I think a full half hour was spent on all fours in true story-*book fashion.

It led us through a clearing where bamboo cutters had been at work, and we failed to pick it up again even though I offered the guides a king's ransom (in their eyes) if they would show me the old boy before dark. They were lackadaisical about the whole affair. I had to give it up, and as I started for camp I realized that I was very tired. Then we spent an hour going straight up the steepest possible slope and down again following sounds that turned out to be made by a troop of monkeys. When we reached camp at three o'clock in the inevitable downpour of this season, I was "all in." The rain stopped, and I called a conference of the guides with the result that I came to the conclusion that they were entirely useless. They did not want to go on at all. I broke camp immediately and started a two-and-a-half hour march to the Mission not knowing just what my next move would be—probably to hunt up some "bush-*men" as guides. I reached the Mission before sun-*down, in the usual rain, and went to bed.

The next morning I came around to the southwest