Bringing to his mouth the sumpitan, in whose tube he had already placed one of his poisoned arrows, and compressing the trumpet-shaped embouchure against his lips, he gave a puff that sent the shaft on its deadly way with such velocity, that even in clear daylight its exit could only have been detected like a spark from a flint.

In the obscurity that shrouded the gorilla’s roost, nothing at all was seen, and nothing heard; for the sumpit is as silent on its message as the wing of an owl when beating through the twilight.

True, there was something heard, though it was not the sound of the arrow.

Only a growl from the great red gorilla, that had felt something sting him, and on feeling it threw up his paw to scratch the place, no doubt fancying it to be but the bite of a mosquito or hornet. The piece of stick broken off by his fingers may have seemed to him rather strange, but not enough so to arouse him from his dreamy indifference.

Not even when another and anoth............