Yes, he roared like a wounded
buffalo. Never would I have believed that such a vast volume of sound
could have proceeded from the lungs of a single aged man. For fully a
minute his furious bellowings echoed down that great cave, while all
the Pongo soldiers, rising from their recumbent position, pointed
their hands, in some of which torches still burned, at the miserable
Kalubi on whom their wrath seemed to be concentrated, rather than on
us, and hissed like snakes.
Really it might have been a scene in hell with the Motombo playing the
part of Satan. Indeed, his swollen, diabolical figure supported on the
thin, toad-like legs, the great fires burning on either side, the
lurid lights of evening reflected from the still water beyond and
glowering among the tree tops of the mountain, the white-robed forms
of the tall Pongo, bending, every one of them, towards the wretched
culprit and hissing like so many fierce serpents, all suggested some
uttermost deep in the infernal regions as one might conceive them in a
nightmare.
Pages:
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427