Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout Papers1,500 dollars, was overtaken, felled, brained, and torninto ten thousand pieces; and I dare say the same fatewould have fallen on me, but that the little Gorilla,whose wound I had dressed, flung its arms round myneck (their arms, you know, are much longer than ours).And when an immense gray Gorilla, with hardly anyteeth, brandishing the trunk of a gollyboshtree aboutsixteen feet long, came up to me roaring, the little onesqueaked out something plaintive, which, of course, Icould not understand; on which suddenly the monsterflung down his tree, squatted down on his huge hamsby the side of the little patient, and began to bellowand weep.And now, do you see whom I had rescued? I had rescuedthe young Prince of the Gorillas, who was out walkingwith his nurse and footman. The footman had runoff to alarm his master, and certainly I never saw afootman run quicker. The whole army of Gorillas rushedforward to rescue their prince, and punish his enemies.If the King Gorilla’s emotion was great, fancy what thequeen’s must have been when she came up! She arrived,on a litter, neatly enough made with wattledbranches, on which she lay, with her youngest child, aprince of three weeks old.My little protege with the wounded leg, still persistedin hugging me with its arms (I think I mentioned thatthey are longer than those of men in general), and asthe poor little brute was immensely heavy, and the Gorillasgo at a prodigious pace, a litter was made for uslikewise; and my thirst much refreshed by a footman(the same domestic who had given the alarm) runninghand over hand up a cocoanut-tree, tearing the rindsoff, breaking the shell on his head, and handing me thefresh milk in its cup. My little patient partook of a little,stretching out its dear little unwounded foot, with which,or with its hand, a Gorilla can help itself indiscriminately.Relays of large Gorillas relieved each other atthe litters at intervals of twenty minutes, as I calculatedby my watch, one of Jones and Bates’s, of Boston,Mass., though I have been unable to this day to ascertainhow these animals calculate time with such surprisingaccuracy. We slept for that night under—150