“Why not? Certainly. Ladies first,” smiled back the gallant Yankee.
“Well then,” I triumphantly concluded, “as they can’t understand us, they’ll of course, after the manner of their sex, be guided by LOOKS, and—America wins.”
We shouted at Hopkins’ discomfiture. He certainly looked nonplussed and aggrieved. He was shaping a retort, and his mouth had already formed the words “See here, Erickson; don’t you fool yourself—” when there was a movement on the opposite bank. Almost instantly Hopkins’ quick eye was diverted, and his arm shot forward, indicating the intrusion, while he whispered in the stage-struck style, “Look, look!”
We turned as one man. Opposite, thrusting their heads out of the foliage of the bank, and revealing too the front quarters of their bodies were four wild pigs, a hog, a sow and two youngsters. The adult animals were of great size, with portentous mouths and snouts, flat cheek protrusions, hairy, pointed ears, and the animals bore two upturned involuted tooth horns or tusks on each side of their upper and lower jaws. The animals were black, their bodies covered with coarse, spiny short hair, bristling into a mane at the neck and their small, fiery eyes snapped viciously. They were large brutes, stout, muscular, possessed of a strange hollow grunt that rumbled ominously inside their heads for a while, and then became suddenly audible as a terrifying, snorting squeal. It was the oddest, most unaccountable animal noise any of us had ever heard. But the Professor complacently informed us that the creatures were undoubtedly related to the Forest Pig—Hylochoerus meinertz hageni—of British East Africa, and that their study would add a new chapter to natural history, while the skins of the monsters would be eagerly competed for by the museums of the world.
Hopkins dismissed this with a wave of his hand, urging the antecedent considerations of pork chops, fresh ham, and sausage. The subjects of this colloquy remained, however, undisturbed. Had we shot them there was no discoverable way in our position at the time to secure their bodies, and from the gastronomic point of view the Professor questioned their importance.
The pigs watched us nervously for a short time, then they grunted reflectively; their whitish-green eyes were almost distended in excitement and shone with a blue light. But with a raised arm, a thrown pebble, and a shout from Goritz they flew off, crashing among the undergrowth and easily traceable in their flight down the hillside by the wake of violently agitated shrubbery and herbs.
“An interesting encounter,” remarked the Professor. “Its congener is found today over the slopes of Mt. Kenia at a high altitude, where the jungle and the forest meet, supposed by Akely to follow the trail of the elephant, and addicted to an inexplicable habit of scraping together leaves and grasses which it forms into diminutive mounds. We are coming into a warmer region, the increasing prevalence of acacia and eucalyptus-like trees, the occasional pitch pine, and something like an evergreen oak indicate that, though this floral association may be uncommon. I really believe that along the edges of that great lake ahead of us are—palms!”
It was only a short way from this delightful spot, with its sweeping view, that we heard the rush and roar of falling water, as we now fought our way through a tangled maze of branches, emerging at intervals on grassy glades which bore evidence of the past presence of the wild pigs. An hour later we almost tumbled over the brink of a rocky gulf, into which the gathered waters of the river obviously fell. We could not see the falls, but the spouting spray, rising in spiral puffs, the moisture showering through the trees, and the dull bass resonation from the tormented pool that caught the plunging torrent, announced its nearness.
It was a matter of some difficulty, making our descent, and the ropes again did good service in helping us down the vertical walls. It was pretty clear that we were about to meet a picture of some grandeur, for our climb continued, and when we finally broke through to the river again, we had descended over three hundred feet. Fortunately we were not required to increase our exertions to reach a favorable position for enjoyment of the scenic wonder we had circumvented. It was before us.
Above us in a narrow sheet, in a setting of the wildest beauty, the river poured its flood, tense, glossy, when it first slipped over the rim, as with that convulsive firmness of the young swimmer at the first plunge over his head. Then it began unraveling its woven strands, and became plicated in silken ridges that unwound still more, or flew apart in diamond dust, so volatile that it rose upward in shimmers and rainbows, while at our feet, discharged from the overburdened pool, rushed a torrent of mobile beryl. It was transcendently lovely in the frame of trees; and how amazing to have repeated here, at the pole of the earth, the familiar charms of the woodlands and streams, the sylvan solitudes of the world in temperate and tropical climes where the sun rose and set each day throughout the year!