ippopotamus had the impertinence to rise, blowing like a
whale, not ten feet from where we sat. We could have thrown our tin
cups and hit him; but he was in the water, and now we were seeking
only those on land.

[Illustration: Mr. Davis and Native "Boy," on the Kasai River.]

Two years ago when the atrocities along the Kasai made the natives
fear the white man and the white man fear the natives, each of the
river boats was furnished with a stand of Albini rifles. Three of
the black soldiers, who were keen sportsmen, were served with these
muskets, and as soon as the moon rose, the soldiers and Anfossi, my
black boy, with an extra gun, and I set forth to clear the island of
hippos. To the stranger it was a most curious hunt. The island was
perfectly flat and bare, and the river had eaten into it and
overflowed it with tiny rivulets and deep, swift-running streams.
Into these rivulets and streams the soldiers plunged, one in front,
feeling the depth of the water with a sounding rod, and as he led we
followed. The black men made a splendid picture. They were naked but
for breech-cloths, and the moonlight flashed on their wet skins and
upon the polished barrels of the muskets. But, as a sporting
proposition, as far as I could see, we had taken on the hippopotamus
at his own game. We were supposed to be on an island, but the water
was up to our belts and running at five miles an hour. I could not
understand why we had not openly and aboveboard walked into the
river. Wading waist high in the water with a salmon rod I could
understand, but not swimming around in a river with a gun. The force
of the shallowest stream was the force of the great river behind it,
and wherever you put your foot, the current, on its race to the sea,
annoyed at the impediment, washed the sand from under the sole of
your foot and tugged at your knees and ankles. To add to the
interest the three soldiers held their muskets at full cock, and as
they staggered for a footing each pointed his gun at me. There also
was a strange fish about the size of an English sole that sprang out
of the water and hurled himself through space. Each had a white
belly, and as they skimmed past us in the moonlight it was as though
some one was throwing dinner plates. After we had swum the length of
the English Channel, we returned to the boat. As to that midnight
hunt I am still uncertain as to whether we were hunting the hippos
or the hippos were hunting us.

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