The scenery got more varied as they proceeded more inland; the river swept at times through vast treeless wastes, and on its banks lay alligators basking in the sunshine. This was a temptation never to be resisted. It afforded good ball practice, and I daresay it tickled the alligators up a little if it did nothing else. At other times the river was bounded by gigantic cliffs; here it narrowed, and the current was so strong that a mile an hour of headway was all that could be made, under the highest pressure of steam commensurate with safety.
They had come to the right hunting grounds at last, so thought Chisholm, Frank, and Fred. But Lyell, although always willing to lie to for a day to enjoy the wild scenery, and the shooting the jungles afforded, always counselled going on and on. Early in the morning and an hour or two before the shades of evening fell, were the times they generally chose to disembark for a ramble in the forest.
One day they crept quietly through the bush to a spot whence some noise proceeded. They expected a shot at something. Suddenly they found themselves within a stone’s throw of a herd of most beautiful zebras; they had come to a pool to drink. But beyond them were quite a regiment of giraffes. They could sniff the danger from afar if the zebras could not; they swung their heads as if they were gigantic hammers, stamped with rage, and bounded off ere ever a trigger could be drawn. But our heroes were rewarded half-an-hour afterwards, by falling in with a quantity of hippopotami. These unwieldly monsters were quietly browsing on the rank herbage that the plain afforded them. Probably they never ran so quickly before as they did when fire was opened on them from the bush. Before they had began to shoot, “I say, boys,” said Chisholm, “what a charming view, a nobleman’s castle on a hill, park and trees and all complete! Doesn’t it look like it, though?”
“Yes,” Fred replied, laughing; “and deer and all in it. Don’t they look elegant with their short legs and their swollen mouths?”
Bang—bang—bang!