“I wonder if we have caught anything in our trap,” said one black hunter to another, as he walked along the jungle.
“I hope we have a nice deer, so we can have a good meal,” observed another.
They were close, now, to the pit they had dug, and the black men walked more softly along the jungle path, for they wanted to see what was in their trap without being seen. One of them went carefully up and looked in. When he saw Chunky, the hippo boy, at the bottom, the black man gave a cry of delight.
“Oh, we have caught a hippo! We have caught a young hippo!” he shouted, leaping about and waving his sharp spear over his head. “It is much better than a goat or a pig, for we shall have much more meat to eat. Ho! for the hippo!”
Of course the black hunter talked in his own language which his friends, the other hunters, understood. They gathered with him about the edge of the pit and looked down. They could see poor Chunky there, though, of course, they did not know his name.
“Ha!” cried the black hunters. “We shall have a fine meal now! We shall have lots to eat!”
For the reason they had dug the pit in the jungle was to get something to eat. They had no store or market where they could go to buy anything. When they were hungry they had to hunt pigs, elephants or hippos with their guns or spears, or trap them in pits or nets.
“We must get him out of the pit,” said the first black hunter. “We cannot cook him and eat him if he is down there.”
Chunky did not understand what the men were saying, and he did not know what they were going to do to him. But he soon found out. The men brought long ropes, made from twisted jungle vines, and lowered them down into the pit. They did not dare jump down themselves, for though Chunky was only a little hippo, compared to the grown ones, still he was strong, and his big teeth could bite very hard. The black hunters wanted to tie him with ropes before they lifted him out.