“By Jove, that sounds like a joke,” protested the Englishman. “Don’t rag me now.”
“Joke!” repeated Blake. “Why, that’s Scripture, Pat, Scripture! Anyway, you’d think it no joke to wake up and find yourself going down the throat of a hippo.”
“Hippo?”
“Dozens of them over in the river. Shouldn’t wonder if they’ve all landed, and ’re tracking me down by this time.”
“But hippopotami are not carnivorous–they’re not at all dangerous, unless one wounds them, out in the water.”
“That may be; but I’m not taking chances. They’ve got mouths like sperm whales–I saw one take a yawn. Another thing, that bayou is chuck full of alligators, and a fellow down on the Rand told me they’re like the Central American gavials for keenness to nip a swimmer.”
“They will not come out on this dry land.”
“Suppose they won’t–there’re no other animals in Africa but sheep, eh?”
“What can we do? The captain told me that there are both lions and leopards on this coast.”
“Nice place for them, too, around these trees,” added Blake. “Lucky for us, they’re night-birds mostly,–if that Rand fellow didn’t lie. He was a Boer, so I guess he ought to know.”