So down into the pit they dangled their strong vine ropes. Chunky saw them coming and felt them on his back, but he could not get out of the way of them. Soon they were tangled about his legs and body, and then, all the black hunters pulling together, they lifted the hippo out of the hole.
Chunky grunted and wiggled, but it was of no use. He could not get away from the ropes that were soon wound all about him.
Then just as one of the black hunters was about to stick him with a spear, to kill him, suddenly there was a loud noise in the jungle that made the black hunters look in the direction from which it sounded.
They saw, coming toward them, some white men with black men—servants to carry their guns, tents and boxes of food. It was a party of white hunters out seeking wild animals.
“What have you there?” asked the leader of the white hunters of the head of the black hunters—the one who had first looked down at Chunky in the pit. “What have you there?”
“We have a small hippo,” was the answer.
“And what are you going to do with him?”
“We are going to eat him, for we are hungry, and he has much meat on him—he is nice and fat.”
“Oh, don’t kill him!” said the white hunter. “I will buy him from you alive, and I’ll take him to a far-off land where people who do not see many hippos can see him. I can sell him to a circus. Don’t kill the little hippo. Sell him to me. Then you can buy other things to eat.”