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Updated: June 19, 2025
"Good!" cried Overtop; "and if you will take a hint from me, you will show your elephants in the act of being caught by natives, or engaged in combats with each other; your lions fighting your tigers or your rhinoceroses; your hippopotamuses engaged in death struggles with your crocodiles; and your boa constrictors gobbling down your natives or, if that is objectionable on the score of humanity, your monkeys."
We were starting early, because Sir Lionel had planned a good many things for us to see before dark; but early as it was, Piccadilly and Knightsbridge were seething with traffic. Motor-'buses like mad hippopotamuses; taxi-cabs like fierce young lions; huge carts like elephants; and other vehicles of all sorts to make up a confused medley of wild animals escaped from the Zoo.
Then the hunter, naked, stepped into the hollow of the ribs, and kneeling down in the bloody pool washed his whole body with the blood and excretions of the animal, while he prayed to the soul of the hippopotamus not to bear him a grudge for having killed her and so blighted her hopes of future maternity; and he further entreated the ghost not to stir up other hippopotamuses to avenge her death by butting at and capsizing his canoe.
But the deal has already been made public, and the motives of those who now oppose improvement of conditions in the Congo, and who support Leopold, will be at once suspected. To me the most interesting thing about the tract of land ceded to Mr. Ryan, apart from the number of hippopotamuses I saw on it, was that the people living along the Congo say that it is of no value.
"To be sure we do," interrupted Glynn; "we use anchors baited with live crocodiles sometimes elephants, when we can't get crocodiles. But hippopotamuses do best." "Oh! Glynn!" cried Ailie, laughing, "how can you?" "It all depends on the drogue," remarked the doctor.
There were great hippopotamuses plunging about in their clumsy way; the crocodiles, looking more like stone beasts than living things, basking motionless on the mud where the river had fallen; the monkeys that had their homes with the storks among the trees that covered the banks in places; the storks that sounded as if they were laughing, and 'seemed highly amused at anybody thinking of going up to Gondokoro with the hope of doing anything. In a forest higher up they found a tribe, the Dinkas, dressed in necklaces.
The Prince rode out of the town with his hippopotamuses trotting and frisking behind him, and people got inside their houses as quickly as they could when they heard the voices of his pack and the blowing of his horn. The pack squeezed through the town gates and off across country to hunt the dragon.
He drained the silver hunting bottle slung from his shoulder, and stretched his legs in the hollow tree. He never shed a single tear for his poor tame hippopotamuses who had eaten from his hand and followed him faithfully in all the pleasures of the chase for so many years. For he was a false Prince, with a skin like leather and hair like hearth brushes and a heart like a stone.
The three hippopotamuses paused before the cave, with their front feet upon the bank and their bodies in the water, and called in chorus a greeting to Glinkomok. Instantly thereafter the mouth of the cave darkened and the creature glided silently toward them. The hippopotamuses were afraid to look upon it, and bowed their heads between their legs.
As he and his men sailed up the Nile they met with many dangers. There were rapids to pass, furious hippopotamuses to charge their boats, and on the banks were concealed enemies, throwing their assegais with deadly aim. And through all this he had only a pack of cowardly Arabs to depend on for everything.
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