re as
the gorilla was too terrible to think upon.

"Peterkin," said I anxiously, "what do you mean?"

"I mean," replied he slowly, "that Jack is the only living specimen of
the gorilla in Africa."

"Come, now, I see you are jesting."

"Am I?" cried Peterkin savagely--"jesting, eh? That means expressing
thoughts and opinions which are not to be understood literally. Oh, I
would that I were sure that I am jesting! Ralph, it's my belief, I tell
you, that the gorilla is a regular sell--a great, big, unnatural hairy
_do_!"

"But I saw the skeleton of one in London."

"I don't care for that. You may have been deceived, humbugged. Perhaps
it was a compound of the bones of a buffalo and a chimpanzee."

"Nay, that were impossible," said I quickly; "for no one pretending to
have any knowledge of natural history and comparative anatomy could be
so grossly deceived."

"What like was the skeleton, Ralph?" inquired Jack, who seemed to be
rather amused by our conversation.

"It was nearly as tall as that of a medium-sized man--I should think
about five feet seven or eight inches; but the amazing part about it was
the immense size and thickness of its bones. Its shoulders were much
broader than yours, Jack, and your chest is a mere child's compared with
that of the specimen of the gorilla that I saw. Its legs were very
short--much shorter than those of a man; but its arms were tremendous--
they were more than a foot longer than yours. In fact, if the brute's
legs were in the same proportion to its body as are those of a man, it
would be a giant of ten or eleven feet high. Or, to take another view
of it, if you were to take a robust and properly proportioned giant of
that height, and cut down his legs until he stood about the height of an
ordinary man, _that_ would be a gorilla."

"I don't believe it," cried Peterkin.

"Well, perhaps my simile is not quite so felicitous as--"

"I don't mean that," interrupted Peterkin; "I mean that I don't believe
there's such a brute as a gorilla at all."

"Why, what has made you so sceptical?" inquired Jack.

"The nonsense that these niggers have been telling me, through the
medium of Mak as an interpreter; that is what has made me sceptical.
Only think, they say that a gorilla is so strong that he can lift a man
by the nape of the neck clean off the ground with one of his hind feet!
Yes, they say he is in the habit of sitting on the lower branches of
trees in lonely dark pa