CHAPTER XXII.
SPEARING HIPPOPOTAMI.
Next day, soon after noon, Hatibu and I left Bilal in charge of the camp. With four men armed with muskets we went in a canoe with two natives about three miles down the river, where we landed, and there found one of the most extraordinary sights that one ever saw. The river was about ten feet below its highest level in flood-time, and the water, falling, had left a huge, swampy lagoon, separated from it by five or six hundred yards of muddy ground. On the shores of this lagoon were the most extraordinary flocks of storks and other birds, which, according to our guides, came there only at certain times of the year, and then stopped for a few days. We could see numbers of hippopotami wallowing about in the water, it in many places not being deep enough to cover them. Lying on its banks were a lot of dark objects, looking something like decayed trunks of trees. As we drew near they began to move, and then I saw that they were crocodiles.
LAGOON NEAR LUAMA.
Page 298.
Certainly we had been brought where there were plenty of hippopotami, but it was a question how we could get at them. There was great danger, especially if we waded into the water, of being attacked by the crocodiles. I at first proposed that we should haul the canoe across the muddy strip separating the river from the lagoon; but we soon found that we had not men enough to do it. Hatibu began to scold the guides, telling them they had brought us on a fool’s errand; but they begged of us not to be angry, saying we should, by following a path which they pointed out, reach in half an hour a village where we could rest till sunset, and close to this village was a place where the hippopotami constantly came out to feed on the growing crops, and where a proper ambuscade had been made to spear them from.
At first Hatibu did not care about going to this village, as he feared some treachery; and, even without treachery, the people belonging to the parties with us might bring about a row with the natives, and we might be cut off from our companions, and be unable to defend ourselves. I overruled his scruples. Following the path, we struck through some tall cane grass, and found the whole ground covered with tracks of hippopotami and crocodiles, while occasionally we came across fresh tracks of elephants. As soon as we saw these, Hatibu became eager to go on, the hope of adding to his stock of ivory overweighing any feeling of caution.