skirt. Almost immediately after follows the sound of a little
click from the next cabin, and then apparently one of the
denizens of the infernal regions has got its tail smashed in a
door and the heavy hot afternoon air is reft by an inchoate howl
of agony. I drop my needlework and take to the deck ; but it
is after all only that shy retiring young man practising secretly
on his clarionet.
The captain is drowsily looking down the river.
But repose is not long allowed to that active spirit,
he sees something in the water— what ? “ Hippopotame, he
ejaculates. Now both he and the engineer frequently do this
thing, and then fly off to their guns— bang, bang, finish ; but this
time he does not dash for his gun, nor does the engineer, who flies
out of his cabin at the sound of the war shout “ Hippopotame'.'
In vain I look across the broad river with its stretches of yellow
sandbanks, where the “ hippopotame " should be, but I can see
nothing but four black stumps sticking up in the water away to
the right. Meanwhile the captain and the engineer are flying
about getting off a crew of blacks into the canoe we are towing
alongside. This being done the captain explains to me that on
the voyage up “ the engineer had fired at, and hit a hippopotamus,
and without doubt this was its body floating.” We
are now close enougli even for me to recognise the four stumps
as the deceased’s legs, and soon the canoe is alongside them
and makes fast to one, and then starts to paddle back, hippo
and all, to the Éclaireur. But no such thing ; let them paddle
and shout as hard as they like, the hippo’s weight simply anchors
them. The Éclaireur\>y now has dropped down the river past
them, and has to sweep round and run back. Recognising
promptly what the trouble is, the energetic captain grabs up a
broom, ties a light cord belonging to the leadline to it, and
holding the broom by the end of its handle, swings it round
his head and hurls it at the canoe. The arm of a merciful
Providence being interposed, the broom-tomahawk does not
hit the canoe, wherein, if it had, it must infallibly have killed
some one, but falls short, and goes tearing off with the current,
well out of reach of the canoe. The captain seeing this gross
dereliction of duty by a Chargeur Réunis broom, hauls it in
hand over hand and talks to it. Then he ties the other end of its
line , to the mooring rope, and by a better aimed shot sends the
broom into the water, about ten yards above the canoe, and it
drifts towards it. Breathless excitement ! surely they will get
it now. Alas, no ! Just when it is within reach of the canoe, a
fearful shudder runs through the broom. It throws up its head
and sinks beneath the tide. A sensation of stun comes over all
of us. The crew of the canoe, ready and eager to grasp the
approaching aid, gaze blankly at the circling ripples round
where it sank. In a second the captain knows what -has
happened. That heavy hawser which has been paid out after
it has dragged it down, so he hauls it on board again.
The Éclaireur goes now close enough to the hippo-anchored
canoe for a rope to be flung to the man in her bows ; he catches
it and freezes on gallantly. Saved ! No ! Oh horror ! The
lower deck hums with fear that after all it will not taste that
toothsome hippo chop, for the man who has caught the rope
is as nearly as possible jerked flying out of the canoe when
the strain of the Eclaireur contending with the hippo’s
inertia flies along it, but his companion behind him grips him
by the legs and is in his turn grabbed, and the crew holding
on to each other with their hands, and on to their craft with
their feet, save the man holding on to the rope and the whole
situation ; and slowly bobbing towards us comes the hippopotamus,
who is shortly hauled on board by the winners in
triumph.
My esteemed friends, the captain and the engineer, who of
course have been below during this hauling, now rush on'to the
upper deck, each coatless, and carrying an enormous butcher’s
knife. They dash into the saloon, where a terrific sharpening of
these instruments takes place on the steel belonging to the
saloon carving-knife, and down stairs again. By looking down
the ladder, I can see the pink, pig-like hippo, whose colour
has been soaked out by the water, lying on the lower deck
and the captain and engineer slitting down - the skin intent
on gralloching operations. Providentially, my prophetic soul
induces me to leave the top of the ladder and go forward—
“ run to win’ard,” as Captain Murray would say-jHfor within
two minutes the captain and engineer are up the ladder as if
they had been blown up by the boilers bursting, and go as
O 2