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 took it I heard that roar again—thirty feet away, almost directly above. One plunge and down we would all go three hundred feet to the bottom. Without the support of the sapling at my back it would not be humanly possible to fire the big gun upward from that trail. There was a deal of comfort in the feel of that old gun even though theoretically I did not fear gorillas; it had stood by me in more than one close place. After the roar there was silence for an instant—not a branch stirred—then a crashing rush along at a level, above and past me—another roar—back again to where he had been. I had seen nothing but a swaying of the mass of vegetation right down to our feet. He stopped where he had been at first. Silence. Through the green against the sky I seemed to make out a denser mass—the outline of his head. I aimed just below and his fourth roar was broken by the roar of the .475. A terrific crashing plunge of three or four hundred pounds of beast, he struck the trail eight feet from me. The gun was on him. There was a soft nose in the left barrel ready for him, but it was unnecessary. The slight ledge of trail did not stop him in the least. He crashed on down over and over, almost straight downward toward the edge of the chasm.

My heart sank for I realized that if he went to the bottom I would stand little chance of being able to recover him and my first gorilla would have been killed in vain. Overhanging the edge of the chasm there was a lone tree, two feet in diameter, and the gorilla in his plunge struck this tree, rolled