morning we had our third and last chance at a hippo.

It is distinctly a hard-luck story. We had just gone on the bridge
for breakfast when we saw him walking slowly from us along an island
of white sand as flat as your hand, and on which he loomed large as
a haystack. Captain Jensen was a true sportsman. He jerked the bell
to the engine-room, and at full speed the _Deliverance_ raced for
the shore. The hippo heard us, and, like a baseball player caught
off base, tried to get back to the river. Captain Jensen danced on
the deck plates:

"Schoot it! schoot it!" he yelled, "Gotfurdamn! schoot it!" When
Anfossi and I fired, the _Deliverance_ was a hundred yards from the
hippo, and the hippo was not five feet from the bank. In another
instant, he would have been over it and safe. But when we fired, he
went down as suddenly as though a safe had dropped on him. Except
that he raised his head, and rolled it from side to side, he
remained perfectly still. From his actions, or lack of actions, it
looked as though one of the bullets had broken his back; and when
the blacks saw he could not move they leaped and danced and
shrieked. To them the death of the big beast promised much chop.

But Captain Jensen was not so confident. "Schoot it," he continued
to shout, "we lose him yet! Gotfurdamn! schoot it!"

My gun was an American magazine rifle, holding five cartridges. We
now were very near the hippo, and I shot him in the head twice, and,
once, when he opened them, in the jaws. At each shot his head would
jerk with a quick toss of pain, and at the sight the blacks screamed
with delight that was primitively savage. After the last shot, when
Captain Jensen had brought the _Deliverance_ broadside to the bank,
the hippo ceased to move. The boat had not reached the shore before
the boys with the steel hawser were in the water; the gangplank was
run out, and the black soldiers and wood boys, with their knives,
were dancing about the hippo and hacking at his tail. Their idea was
to make him the more quickly bleed to death. I ran to the cabin for
more cartridges. It seemed an absurd precaution. I was as sure I had
the head of that hippo as I was sure that my own was still on my
neck. My only difficulty was whether to hang the head in the front
hall or in the dining-room. It might be rather too large for the
dining-room. That was all that troubled me. After three minutes,
when I was back on deck, the hippo still lay immovable. Certainl