Then, quite a long while afterwards, or so it seemed, the breeze brought the faint sound of the thud of that fateful bullet to our ears.
Though perhaps I ought not to say so, it was really a wonderful shot in all the circumstances, for, as I learned afterwards, the ball struck just where I hoped that it might, in the centre of the breast, piercing the heart.

Indeed, taking everything into consideration, I think that those four shots which I fired in Pongo-land are the real record of my career as a marksman.

The first at night broke the arm of the gorilla god and would have killed him had not the charge hung fire and given him time to protect his head.

The second did kill him in the midst of a great scrimmage when everything was moving.

The third, fired by the glare of lightning after a long swim, slew the Motombo, and the fourth, loosed at this great distance from a moving boat, was the bane of that cold-blooded and treacherous man, Komba, who thought that he had trapped us to Pongo-land to be murdered and eaten as a sacrifice.