As we walked, we could hear them talk to each other, one answering after the other stopped. It was a real ngina conversation. I could detect the different intonations.
We walked several miles, all the time hearing the two gorillas continuously talking to each other. Rogala said to me: "There is not food enough for the two together, so they have separated in order that each may have enough to eat."
After a while their voices came nearer and nearer, and our position became, I thought, dangerous.
Rogala said in a very low tone: "The nginas are going to meet before night; for they will sleep very near together."
Louder and louder their guttural roar-like sounds came. At last they seemed to be abreast of us, one on either side. I asked Rogala in a very low tone: "Have the nginas scented us?"
"No," he replied in a whisper; "they are talking to each other, and will gradually meet as they come along picking berries and fruits. The nginas can see wonderfully well through the jungle. So let us stand perfectly still.
"The female ngina always runs away," continued Rogala. "It is the male ngina that fights, but both are afraid of noise, and when they hear it they go in an opposite direction. It is only when the male is suddenly surprised by the appearance of a man that he attacks him, or when he is tired of being followed or tracked. Then he makes a stand. Then it is a fight for life."
There was no mistake. The nginas were abreast of us, and we were not more than half a mile from each. But soon the voices or sounds gradually seemed to be ahead of us and became more and more distant. They had passed us.
"After they meet," said Rogala, "the female ngina, as it is getting late, will go up a tree to sleep with her baby if she has one, and the big fellow will sleep at the foot of the tree, his back resting against its trunk, and there keep watch. We will sleep in the forest to-night. We have koola nuts in our bags, and we will eat these for our evening and morning meals, and we will go after the nginas to-morrow at daybreak."
The nginas' tremendous voices gradually died away, till one might have thought it was the dying reverberation in the far distance of claps of thunder.
We slept at the foot of a large tree, and made a very small fire, for we did not dare to sleep without one. We had collected the firewood very quietly.