e had to go in at one end and out at the other! Each lake,
too, is alive with them; and both lakes and rivers are many.

Nobody disturbs hippos, save for trophies and an occasional supply of
meat for the men or of cooking fat for the kitchen. Therefore they wax
fat and sassy, and will long continue to flourish in the land.

It takes time to kill a hippo, provided one is wanted. The mark is
small, and generally it is impossible to tell whether or not the bullet
has reached the brain. Harmed or whole the beast sinks anyway. Some
hours later the distention of the stomach will float the body. Therefore
the only decent way to do is to take the shot, and then wait a half
day to see whether or not you have missed. There are always plenty of
volunteers in camp to watch the pool, for the boys are extravagantly
fond of hippo meat. Then it is necessary to manoeuvre a rope on the
carcass, often a matter of great difficulty, for the other hippos bellow
and snort and try to live up to the circus posters of the Blood-sweating
Behemoth of Holy Writ, and the crocodiles like dark meat very much.
Usually one offers especial reward to volunteers, and shoots into the
water to frighten the beasts. The volunteer dashes rapidly across the
shallows, makes a swift plunge, and clambers out on the floating body as
onto a raft.

Then he makes fast the rope, and everybody tails on and tows the whole
outfit ashore. On one occasion the volunteer produced a fish line and
actually caught a small fish from the floating carcass! This sounds like
a good one; but I saw it with my own two eyes.

It was at the hippo pool camp that we first became acquainted with Funny
Face.

Funny Face was the smallest, furriest little monkey you ever saw. I
never cared for monkeys before; but this one was altogether engaging. He
had thick soft fur almost like that on a Persian cat, and a tiny human
black face, and hands that emerged from a ruff; and he was about as big
as old-fashioned dolls used to be before they began to try to imitate
real babies with them. That is to say, he was that big when we said
farewell to him. When we first knew him, had he stood in a half pint
measure he could just have seen over the rim. We caught him in a little
thorn ravine all by himself, a fact that perhaps indicates that his
mother had been killed, or perhaps that he, like a good little Funny
Face, was merely staying where he was told while she was away. At any
rate he fought savagely,