om the stern of the _Deliverance_ was the basin I had
discovered; at an equal distance from her bow, a stream plunged into
the river. Anfossi argued the hippos would prefer to drink the clear
water of the stream, to the muddy water of the basin, and elected to
watch at the stream. I carried a deck chair to the edge of my basin
and placed it in the shadow of the trees. Anfossi went into our
cabin for his rifle. At that exact moment a hippopotamus climbed
leisurely out of the river and plunged into the stream. One of the
soldiers on shore saw him and rushed for the boat. Anfossi sent my
boy on the jump for me and, like a gentleman, waited until I had
raced the sixty yards. But when we reached the stream there was
nothing visible but the trampled grass and great holes in the mud
and near us in the misty moonlight river something that puffed and
blew slowly and luxuriously, as would any fat gentleman who had been
forced to run for it. Had I followed Anfossi's judgment and gone
along the bank sixty yards ahead, instead of sixty yards astern of
the _Deliverance_, at the exact moment at which I sank into my deck
chair, the hippo would have emerged at my feet. It is even betting
as to which of us would have been the more scared.

The next day, and for days after, we saw nothing but hippos. We saw
them floating singly and in family groups, with generally four or
five cows to one bull, and sometimes in front a baby hippo no larger
than a calf, which the mother with her great bulk would push against
the swift current, as you see a tugboat in the lee of a great liner.
Once, what I thought was a spit of rocks suddenly tumbled apart and
became twenty hippos, piled more or less on top of each other.
During that one day, as they floated with the current, enjoying
their afternoon's nap, we saw thirty-four. They impressed me as the
most idle, and, therefore, the most aristocratic of animals. They
toil not, neither do they spin; they had nothing to do but float in
the warm water and the bright sunshine; their only effort was to
open their enormous jaws and yawn luxuriously, in the pure content
of living, in absolute boredom. They reminded you only of fat gouty
old gentlemen, puffing and blowing in the pool at the Warm Springs.

The next chance we had at one of them on shore came on our first
evening in the Kasai just before sunset. Captain Jensen was steering
for a flat island of sand and grass where he meant to tie up for the
night. Ab