y
twenty men were standing about him; three were sawing off his tail,
and the women were chanting triumphantly a song they used to sing in
the days when the men were allowed to hunt, and had returned
successful with food.

On the bridge was Anfossi with his camera. Before the men had
surrounded the hippo he had had time to snap one picture of it. I
had just started after my camera, when from the blacks there was a
yell of alarm, of rage, and amazement. The hippo had opened his
eyes and raised his head. I shoved the boys out of the way, and,
putting the gun close to his head, fired pointblank. I wanted to put
him out of pain. I need not have distressed myself. The bullet
affected him no more than a quinine pill. What seemed chiefly to
concern him, what apparently had brought him back to life, was the
hacking at his tail. That was an indignity he could not brook.

His expression, and he had a perfectly human expression, was one of
extreme annoyance and of some slight alarm, as though he were
muttering: "This is no place for _me_," and, without more ado, he
began to roll toward the river. Without killing some one, I could
not again use the rifle. The boys were close upon him, prying him
back with the gangplank, beating him with sticks of firewood, trying
to rope him with the steel hawser. On the bridge Captain Jensen and
Anfossi were giving orders in Danish and Italian, and on the bank I
swore in American. Everybody shoved and pushed and beat at the great
bulk, and the great bulk rolled steadily on. We might as well have
tried to budge the Fifth Avenue Hotel. He reached the bank, he
crushed it beneath him, and, like a suspension bridge, splashed into
the water. Even then, we who watched him thought he would stick fast
between the boat and the bank, that the hawser would hold him. But
he sank like a submarine, and we stood gaping at the muddy water and
saw him no more. When I recovered from my first rage I was glad he
was still alive to float in the sun and puff and blow and open his
great jaws in a luxurious yawn. I could imagine his joining his
friends after his meeting with us, and remarking in reference to our
bullets: "I find the mosquitoes are quite bad this morning."

With this chapter is published the photograph Anfossi took, from the
deck of the steamer, of our hippo--the hippo that was too stupid to
know when he was dead. It is not a good photograph, but of our hippo
it is all we have to show. I am still undec