o pitched head downward and plunged
like a mountain of meat gone mad, thrashing up great waves that were
darkened with his life-blood. A whole herd, several hundred strong,
emerged shoulder-high from the water to take one swift look at him and
flee. The arriving wind overswept the little whirlpools they all made
in the moonlight, as they dived to seek seclusion somewhere and no
doubt to choose themselves a new bully after terrific fighting.

Our quarry plunged a last time, and stayed under. Now was new anxiety.
In twenty minutes or half an hour he should rise to the surface again,
but no man could guess where, and the wind and currents would very
swiftly hide his great carcass somewhere amid the acres of papyrus
unless sharp eyes were alert.

But the papyrus was friend as well as foe. In a space of time to be
measured by seconds the yelling young men of the tribe had uncovered
three canoes, hidden from marauding enemies among the
more-than-man-high reeds, and the rest of the tribe--men, women and
young ones--scattered along the shore to watch from between the stalks.

In less than fifteen minutes some one yelled, and even the very old
men, who had stayed beside us to gape at Fred's rifle and our clothes
and boots, began running like hares toward the sound. In twenty
minutes after that, with the aid of grass ropes and leather thongs,
they had hauled the huge carcass to the shore and rolled it out of the
water, where it lay glistening in moonlight, stumpy, foolish, legs
uppermost.

The butcher's work----the feast--did not begin yet. There was
time-honored custom to obey, which Kazimoto knew all about even if
those ignorant wachenzie* would have fallen to without ceremony. He
drove them off. A white man had slain that animal; therefore the
white man's choice of meat was first, and he very leisurely and
skillfully cut out the enormous tongue for us and fifty pounds of meat
for our following before he would let them as much as touch the carcass
with a dagger. [* Plural of machenzie, "man from 'way back,'"
"rube," "simp."]

Then, though, the tribe fell to, naked, with little naked
knives--tearing off the thick hide in foot-wide strips, and hacking the
red flesh into lumps that they ate, raw and quivering, while they
worked. The little bits of children, each chewing raw bloody meat,
brought baskets for the overflow, dragging them to wherever they could
find a space between the legs of struggling men, the women