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The grass was as inflammable as tinder, and the strong north wind drove the long line of fire spreading in every direction through the country. A day with the howartis A hippo's gallant fight Abou Do leaves us Three yards from a lion Days of delight A lion's furious rage Astounding courage of a horse. A LITTLE before sunrise I accompanied the howartis, or hippopotamus-hunters, for a day's sport.
The air in the vicinity of the heeling craft was thick with spray and flying fragments of woodwork. Raising his pistol von Gobendorff placed the muzzle within an inch of the hippo's right eye, and fired two shots in quick succession. Then, without waiting to observe the effect, he put two bullets into the animal's left eye.
"I am not to be moved by tears, even if they are frozen and sharpened to a point," laughed the Hippopotamus, as the Polar Bear did as he was told, smashing the icicle without so much as denting the Hippo's flesh. "Well, if you won't jump, I will," said the Man from Saturn angrily. "If I'm hurt I'll take it out of your hide when we meet again." "All right," retorted the Hippopotamus.
"Bring up some of the elephants, and have them pull the hippo's cage out of the mud!" cried the head circus man. He called him "hippo" for short, you see. Up came two big elephants, and chains were put about their necks, and made fast to the hippopotamus wagon. "Now, pull!" cried the circus men, and the elephants strained and pulled as hard as they could.
The harpoon this time went straight into one of Hippo's eyes, and, although it was a cruel stroke, it was also a merciful one, for it touched the brain, and in a very few minutes Hippo, with a few spasmodic efforts, blew his last blast of rage, snorted and groaned for the last time, and, with a mighty stirring of the waters, rolled heavily over in the African river, by the side of which he had been born, and died.
The lower deck hums with fear that after all it will not taste that toothsome hippo chop, for the man who has caught the rope is as nearly as possible jerked flying out of the canoe when the strain of the Eclaireur contending with the hippo's inertia flies along it, but his companion behind him grips him by the legs and is in his turn grabbed, and the crew holding on to each other with their hands, and on to their craft with their feet, save the man holding on to the rope and the whole situation; and slowly bobbing towards us comes the hippopotamus, who is shortly hauled on board by the winners in triumph.
The consequence was, he was nearly suffocated or drowned, for it is only the adult animals who can stay any time under water, and even they are obliged to come up often in order to obtain fresh air. So Hippo's wife or widow, as she was by this time administered a severe punishment to her son by first giving him a bite, and then refusing to give him his supper.
And, as they looked, the hippopotamus opened his great, big red jaws as wide as he could, and the man just turned the whole pail full of soft bran into the hippo's mouth! "Oh, what a big bite!" cried Freddie, and every one laughed. "Does he always eat that way?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey of the keeper. "Well, I generally feed him that way when there are visitors here," was the answer.
Hippolyta and Philippa Horsman were in tightly-made short-skirted dresses, pork-pie hats, and strong boots, all black picked out with scarlet, like Hippo's own complexion.
We'll come out all right in the end." "But what's the trouble, Mr. Man?" asked the Poker. "What's the Hippo's weight got to do with our going over the edge?" "Why, can't you see?" explained the Man in Charge. "His 6,000 pounds pushing the machine along from behind there gives us just so much extra speed, and all the brakes in the world won't stop us now we've got going unless he gets off."
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