As the Europeans were leaving the village, a few natives thought fit to follow them. They looked like dusky shadows, with their lazy mode of walking, their wonderfully skinny limbs, their flat chests and their small heads, made to appear smaller still by the immense coiffure on top of them. Some were armed with long serrated lances, others with club-headed, sharp-pointed sticks. Eminently practical, the Shillooks make their weapons serve also as fishing-tackle; they disdain the bow and arrow, and replace them by a kind of harpoon, intended for the benefit of the crocodiles and hippopotami.
They appeared, moreover, disposed to give their visitors an opportunity of witnessing their mode of fishing, and some of them brought with them their light canoes, which they never leave on the banks of the Nile, carrying them, after each expedition, on their shoulders back to the village.
Night was falling as the handful of Europeans, followed by a few natives, wended their way towards the river and their flotilla. The hour was propitious for a hippopotamus hunt. This animal, after disporting himself in the river during the day, betakes himself in the evening to some plain or pasture land, where he grazes like other ruminants, his amphibious qualities enabling him to vary his pleasures. The hunters let him go inland, and as soon as they know his retreat they approach him with lighted torches, shouting and beating their drums. The hippopotamus, in alarm and anxious to regain the river, goes back there by the way he came. Then another set of hunters, posted on either side of his path, let fly at him with their formidable harpoons, to each of which is attached, by means of a line about twenty feet long, a float or buoy. The wounded animal carries away with him the shaft which has pierced him, rushes to the Nile and plunges down to a considerable depth under water, the better to hide himself. But the buoys float on the surface, showing his course, and when, weakened by loss of blood, he rises to the surface of the stream, he is attacked anew, despatched and dragged to the shore to be cut up.
The Europeans assisted at an attack made after this fashion upon a magnificent male hippopotamus, and, from the boats which had brought them from the "Khedive," they had a capital view of every incident of the hunting or fishing, by whichever name it may be called. For more than an hour the animal struggled against death, dyeing the water of the Nile with his blood, and from time to time, coming up to the surface, he raised his enormous head, noisily inhaled the fresh air, and fixed his eyes on the tiny canoes surrounding, and gradually closing in upon him.
M. de Morin, desirous of putting an end to the creature's sufferings, fired and hit him in the head. The hippopotamus gave vent to a fearful roar, leaped almost out of the water, and then plunged beneath the stream, once more leaving behind him a rather dangerous eddy. The natives protested, when they saw M. de Morin take up his gun, fearing, no doubt, that if he killed the beast he would lay claim to it. But when they saw that the shot had not taken effect, they passed, without any intermediate stage, from extreme anger to uncontrollable and very obstreperous mirth. Shrieks of laughter resounded from all the canoes, and every finger was pointed in ridicule at the clumsy white man, who, though carrying thunder and lightning with him, in the shape of a gun, yet missed his aim.
M. de Morin was bent on having his revenge, and opportunely thought of a certain piece of advice given by the hunters. Consequently, when about ten minutes afterwards, the head of the animal re-appeared, he aimed behind the ear, the vulnerable part, and the shot took effect.
A final roar, a dying groan was heard, a fresh stream of blood mingled with the waters of the Nile, and the animal, not having strength enough to get under water again, was towed ashore by the line attached to the harpoon, and marked, as we have already said, by a float.
To the great delight of the natives, M. de Morin, who was deemed to be a personage of some importance in their eyes, apparently scorned his share of the quarry, for he ordered the rowers to pull him to the "Khedive." But the escort of the expedition, who were all together on board the boat set apart for their use, had also followed with eager eyes all the incidents of the chase, actuated, undoubtedly, by the very natural feeling that hippopotamus flesh would be a variety in their daily ration, that when well dried by the sun and properly cooked it would afford them an excellent meal, and that, from every point of view, it would be absurd to leave so savoury a prey to such wretches, such contemptible heathens as the Shillooks. No sooner did the thought strike them than a dozen soldiers jumped into the boat belonging to their diahbeeah, landed, ran in amongst the natives, and, seizing the rope by which they were hauling the hippopotamus ashore, proceeded, in their turn, to tow the beast in the direction of the flotilla.
The Shillooks at once gave vent to fearful yells; some rushed off to the village for reinforcements, others beat the drum for assistance, and, from all points of the compass, shoals of natives, club in hand and canoe on back, appeared in sight, as if by enchantment.
The Nubians had, by this time, regained their boat. They had taken the hippopotamus in tow, and were on the point of reaching their diahbeeah, when more than a hundred canoes, placed in the water with inconceivable rapidity, in a solid, compact mass, forming, as it were, a single raft, and manned by a crowd of infuriated natives, brandishing their arms and shrieking for vengeance, advanced against the Franco-Egyptian flotilla.