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Updated: May 12, 2025
And as I spoke I felt a strange, unreasoning fury against the approaching boat. I picked up an Evans rifle we had two on board filled the magazine, handed it to Niâbon, told her to lay it down in the little cabin, out of sight, with the other arms three Snider carbines, my breechloading shotgun, and three of those rotten pin-fire French service revolvers the Lefaucheux.
He had come across the family by chance while riding through the forest, and having shot the mother through the shoulder, she fell struggling between her cubs; these pugnacious brutes immediately commenced fighting, and a couple of shots from the rapid breechloading Sharp rifle settled their ill-timed quarrel.
The chief of the village, a white man in everything but colour, sent me and mine the fattest broad-tailed sheep of his flock, with five measures of matama grain. The mutton was excellent, unapproachable. For his timely and needful present I gave him two doti, and amused him with an exhibition of the wonderful mechanism of the Winchester rifle, and my breechloading revolvers.
Tematau and Tepi each fired two or three shots in quick succession, but missed, and then a very heavy bullet struck the side of the coaming of the steering-well in which I was seated, glanced off and ploughed along the deck, and the second boat now began firing into us with breechloading rifles of some sort. "Let me try," I said to Tematau, clambering out of the well into the cabin.
Baker fired, but neither he nor a left-hand barrel from the "Dutchman" could check her. Everybody had to run, and I luckily snatched a breechloading No. 12 smooth-bore loaded with ball from a panic-stricken lad, and rolled her over with a shot in the chest when she was nearly in the midst of us. She retreated with two or three bounds to her original covert.
All the people were shouting and endeavouring to scare the hippo, which attacked us without ceasing with a blind fury that I have never witnessed in any animal except a bull-dog. By this time I had procured a rifle from the cabin, where they were always kept fixed in a row, loaded and ready for action, with bags of breechloading ammunition on the same shelf.
The line of march would be thus arranged a Bari, who professed to know the path, would lead the advance-guard of fifteen sniders, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Abd-el-Kader, supported by myself with ten sniders in charge of the ammunition, accompanied by Lieutenant Baker, my wife, and two servants, carrying double breechloading elephant rifles. The rear-guard would consist of fifteen sniders.
On the right, the rifles: the little "Dutchman," two breechloading Reilly No. 8, two muzzleloading Holland half-pounders, that carried an iron lead-coated explosive shell, containing a bursting charge of half an ounce of fine grain powder. These two elephant rifles were very hard hitters, and carried twelve drachms of powder.
One of my wife's female servants, Wat-el-Kerreem, would never remain by herself in this room, for fear of "the eyes that stared at her." Everything that we possessed was now minutely scrutinized. The guns and rifles of various breechloading mechanism were all displayed and admired. Kabba Rega thoughtfully asked "which of them I had intended for him?"
The heavy breechloading rifle in the hands of experienced hunters is a weapon which nothing can withstand, and the elephants will be driven far away into the wilderness of an interior where they will be secure from the improved fire-arms of our modern civilisation.
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