Then the ladies and little Ida, at the professor’s invitation, descended the spiral stairway leading down to the bottom of the ship, passed out through the diving-chamber, and sauntered over to inspect at close quarters the three shot elephants, though they declined to take a nearer view of the carcases of the combatants. Mildmay proceeded to look out the axes that would be required for the purpose of cutting out the ivory.
Chapter Twelve.
An Exciting Night among the Reeds.
The task of cutting out the ivory and the ponderous horn of the rhinoceros occupied the five men for the remainder of the day, at the end of which the voyagers dined luxuriously upon the novel and dainty dish of baked elephant’s foot. When the spoils had at length been safely stowed away, the Flying Fish was removed to a respectful distance from the huge carcases—over which there would assuredly be much snarling and fighting during the impending hours of darkness—and berthed in the midst of a dense clump of bush about half a mile to leeward of the small shallow lake already mentioned. It was the intention of the professor and Mildmay to lay up for an hour or two during the coming night among the rushes on its margin, in the hope of securing a shot at a unicorn, or, failing that, anything else worth shooting that might happen to present itself. They spent the quarter of an hour that preceded nightfall in carefully reconnoitring the position, and then retired to their cabins to make the necessary changes into shooting rig before dinner, it being an understood thing that there was no obligation upon any one to don evening dress if there were good and sufficient reasons against it, as in the present case, although the ladies made a point of doing so.
The meal over and the after-dinner cigar duly smoked, Sir Reginald and his companion elephant-hunters having declared that they were too tired to enjoy any further sport that day, the professor and Mildmay bade the rest of the party good-night, and, taking their rifles, set out for the margin of the lake. As a matter of fact, they ought to have started nearly three hours earlier than they did, and taken up their position before nightfall, for many animals drink almost immediately after sunset, and before the light has entirely gone out of the sky; but they hoped to be still in time to get a shot, and hurried on, encouraged by the sounds that floated down to them from the lake telling of animals still there, drinking and bathing. The bathers were most probably elephants, but the pair decided not to interfere with them, arguing that, after all, they were not ivory hunters, and that their object was the acquisition of new or rare trophies, rather than an indiscriminate collection of skins, horns, tusks, and what not. Von Schalckenberg, indeed, declared that if he could not get a unicorn he did not want anything.
Their progress was slow, for although the sky was cloudless and studded with stars that beamed with a clear, mellow radiance and brilliancy unknown in the more humid atmosphere of the temperate zones, the light that they afforded was sufficient only to reveal to the two men the clumps of bush and other objects close at hand. Moreover the grass was long and matted enough to demand the expenditure of a considerable amount of exertion to force a passage through it, and the night was close and very hot. To traverse the half-mile
between the ship and the margin of the lake cost them, therefore, nearly twenty minutes of toilsome walking. At length, however, the professor, who, as the more experienced hunter, was leading the way, murmured—