Of Course I
Missed Him, But The Roar Of The Shot So Surprised Him That He
Came To A Stand.
Memba Sasa passed me the Springfield, and I
managed to get him in the head.
At the shot another flashed into
view, high up in the top of a tree. Again I aimed and fired. The
beast let go and fell like a plummet. "Good shot," said I to
myself. Fifty feet down the colobus seized a limb and went
skipping away through the branches as lively as ever. In a moment
he stopped to look back, and by good luck I landed him through
the body. When we retrieved him we found that the first shot had
not hit him at all!
At the time I thought he must have been frightened into falling;
but many subsequent experiences showed me that this sheer
let-go-all-holds drop is characteristic of the colobus and his
mode of progression. He rarely, as far as my observation goes,
leaps out and across as do the ordinary monkeys, but prefers to
progress by a series of slanting ascents followed by
breath-taking straight drops to lower levels. When closely
pressed from beneath, he will go as high as he can, and will then
conceal himself in the thick leaves.
B. and I procured our desired number of colobus by taking
advantage of this habit-as soon as we had learned it. Shooting
the beasts with our rifles we soon found to be not only very
difficult, but also destructive of the skins.
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