The following day was merely a repetition of the previous one. We advanced through the same dried-up swamp, with its innumerable pits, hidden by the same coarse grass and reeds. If anything, the landscape seemed to have acquired an added tinge of desolation. Rhino were a drug in the market, owing to the increased supply, but zebra and grantei stock advanced several points during the day. We followed the river very closely, not only because it was our only guide, but because the hippopotamus, which abound in this portion of the Waso Nyiro, had, in wandering from pool to pool, trodden a rough path on the crest of the perpendicular bank of the river, which made walking much easier than if we had forced our way across the plain in endeavouring to cut across curves in the river-bed, though it necessitated a longer walk. This path was also a favourite sleeping-place for wandering rhinoceros, and on several occasions we walked almost on to them, as they were hidden by the tall grass. A shout generally brought the sleeping brute to his feet with a snort and a stamp, and he would scurry away over the plain the picture of indignant reproach. During the march a slight misunderstanding between El Hakim and myself came very near to landing us both in an extremely perilous position. One rhino we came up with did not wake so easily, and as he lay right across the path, we had to shift him by some means. Standing fifteen or twenty yards away, we shouted, but he did not move; so El Hakim stole softly up to within three or four yards of him, and, stooping, he broke off clods of earth from the edge of the river-bank and threw them at the sleeping beast, just as a small boy might chivvy a cat with stones. Even that did not move him, so I stole softly up to El Hakim with his ·577, which I handed to him. Instead of taking it, he seized my small-bore rifle, and I, thinking he meant me to try my luck with his, proceeded to cock it; but while I was doing so El Hakim let drive at the brute’s head with my rifle. If he had warned me of his intention, I should have told him that my ·303 shot very high at short range, but he fired before I could do so, and missed its brain altogether, only drilling a clean hole through the ear. Up jumped the rhino and faced us. I waited for El Hakim to fire again, while he, it afterwards appeared, waited for me to put in a shot with the heavier weapon. The rhino, meanwhile, made a rush at us, and we were both prepared to slip over the bank into the river and chance the crocodiles, when the brute changed its mind, and, swerving aside, galloped away across the plain. Mutual explanations ensued, and we proceeded on our momentarily interrupted journey. In cold print it would seem as if we had both betrayed some indecision, but the reader must bear in mind the fact that from the time El Hakim fired the shot from my ·303 to the time the rhino swerved and galloped away, an observer could not have counted more than four or five seconds.