lowed in
Indian file, I bringing up the rear.

The whole tribe rose at once and flitted along beside us on our
landward side. We could not hear a footfall, or a breath. They passed
through dry grass without rustling, neither stumbling nor crowding one
another, but all so governed by one all-absorbing thought that they
acted in absolute unison. That the thought was food did not, even in
their starving state, make them forget the crowning need for silence.
We with our leather boots made more noise than all they together.

We passed along the lake shore for half a mile, until suddenly the
chief, looking tall as a stripped tree in the pale uncertain light,
threw up an arm and waved it in a circle. Instantly the whole tribe
vanished. It was as if a puff of wind had blown them; or as if they
had been figures thrown on a screen by a magic lantern and suddenly
switched off at the performer's whim. Then the chief continued forward,
we marching more carefully.

Now he turned to the half-right and followed a narrow track across a
neck of land that jutted out into the lake. We approached a low rise,
and as he drew near the top of that he went down on hands and knees,
crawling up the last few yards so cautiously that I had to stare hard
to be sure he was there at all.

As soon as Fred came near he made frantic signals to him to get down
and crawl too; so we all knelt down and crawled behind Fred, striving
to make no noise and filling the unhappy chief so full of fury at the
noise we did make that he writhed in nervous torment.

On top of the rise Fred stopped and in imitation of the chief thrust
his head forward very gradually. One by one we followed suit until,
lying prone in line along the ridge within thirty paces of the water,
we saw at last what we were after.

Bathed in the moonlight, head and shoulders clear of the mirror-like
water, a great bull hippopotamus surveyed the scenery, drinking in
contentment through his little placid eyes. Out there nothing troubled
him, as for instance the mosquitoes troubled us. He had eaten his
fill, for some sort of green stuff hung from his jaws; and he was
beginning to feel sleepy, for he opened his enormous mouth and yawned
straight toward us--three tons of meat on the hoof, less than a hundred
yards away, stock-still, and unsuspicious!

The chief began whispering unintelligible warnings in a voice so low
that it sounded like the drone of insects. Fred thrust the rifle
f