Gorillas in the Mist Read Online Free

“Someday I plan to come here to live and work.”
    “Indeed. Well, the study of the great apes is a neglected and tremendously significant field, you know. It could shed a great deal of light on the evolution and behavior of our own early, apelike ancestors…. But now you’re here. Would you like to tour the dig? Can’t go myself, but one of the men will take you around.”
    “That would be wonderful, but could I possibly take your photo first? You know, the best thing about coming on this safari is my good fortune in meeting you.” Dian gave Leakey the smile of a woman who knows she is being admired.
    Accompanied by a sullen Alexander, who had been totally ignored during this interchange, Dian followed the guide to view and photograph the age-old burials. Then they moved on to a current dig where workers were carefully uncovering the fossilized skull of a giant giraffe. While maneuvering to get a picture, Dian slipped and wrenched her ankle. Grimacing with pain, she muttered to Alexander, who was close behind, “Oh, shit! I think I’m going to vomit!”
    He gave her a look of distaste, taking due note of her return to the irritable Dian Fossey he had come to know so well, now that she was out of Leakey’s presence.
    “Well, how about carrying me back?” she demanded. “I can’t get up that hill on only one foot!”
    When they returned to the camp compound, Leakey showed great solicitude, insisting on personally examining and bandaging Dian’s ankle, while his wife, Mary, fetched her a cold andsoothing drink. As they parted, Leakey put his hand lightly on Dian’s shoulder—a somewhat awkward gesture since he had to reach up to her.
    “Go and see your gorillas if you can manage that ankle. I think you will. You strike me as that sort of person. And keep in touch.”
    Uncertain whether he meant this last remark or was simply being polite, Dian was nevertheless in psychic ecstasy—if in considerable physical pain—as Alexander gunned the Land Rover back up the dusty road.
    Through the next four days Dian and John Alexander worked their way northward, skirting Lake Victoria, then on through lush jungle toward Kampala in Uganda. Continual disagreements between them sometimes left Dian shaking with fury. They argued about everything, but mostly about the progress of the safari and whether Alexander was earning his daily fee. He was extremely reluctant to take her into the Congo to see the gorillas.
    “You really try to get away with murder,” she told him angrily.
    “I’m here to see as much as I can, and I’m not leaving until I see the Virunga gorillas.”
    “It’s not that easy,” he argued stubbornly. “There are political problems in the Congo, and my Land Rover and equipment have to have extra insurance. Are you prepared to pay for that?”
    “I
told
you I’ve run out of money,” she retorted furiously. Alexander grunted and speeded up the truck.
    This blasted white hunter has not even made arrangements to get a visa for the Congo, and he keeps coming up with all kinds of new expenditures-the cost of his visa, repair on the Land Rover, gifts for mountain guides, and now extra insurance! He’s going to get a blank check-which is all I have left!
    Her ankle was slowly improving but she still couldn’t get a boot on that foot, so she lived in her shoes.
    I’m grateful to have left Kenya and Tanganyika behind because that also means the end of the British for a while. There are few Europeans in Uganda, and the Congo has only French and Belgians, far more broad-minded than the English. There are so many native tribes around Lake Victoria that it’s impossible to distinguish one from the others. Indians are thrown in to boot, and hundreds of different types of half-breeds. The costumes are as mixed up as the skin colors-and they are all staring at me! I found two little Masai boys on the plains who were all dyed with red ocher. They were wonderful-as shy as the animals of being photographed, but