Setting off once more on our march up the river, we camped soon after midday, and sent men out to search for game. Presently one man returned with the report that a solitary hippo was disporting itself in a rocky pool a little distance away. We adjourned to the spot, and on our arrival sat down to watch. In a moment or two a faint ripple disturbed the surface of the water, and under an overhanging rock on the opposite side of the pool appeared two red nostrils covered with coarse black hair. We held our breath and waited. In about twenty seconds they disappeared as suddenly and as silently as they had come into view. We waited for over an hour in the hope that the brute would expose its head and thus give us an opportunity for a decisive shot. But nothing occurred beyond the periodical appearance and disappearance of the nostrils on the water-line to indicate the presence of the huge body below. At length, as the head did not emerge, we held a whispered consultation, and El Hakim and I decided to cross the river in the hope of obtaining a shot from the opposite bank, leaving George on the look-out. We accordingly made our way down-stream to where the river, running over gravel banks, became shallower. Stripping to our shirts, we waded across breast-deep. Arrived on the other side, we cautiously made our way to a spot opposite George, and directly above the place where the hippo came to the surface to breathe. Half an hour passed while we stood still and silent as statues, with our soaked shirts flapping round our bare legs. Suddenly, unnoticed by George and myself, the hippo came to the surface a little further out in the pool. El Hakim, however, saw it instantly, and quick as thought sent a ·577 bullet through its head. He had not time to place the rifle to his shoulder, and in consequence his finger was torn by the heavy recoil. He succeeded, however, in his object, which was either to kill or momentarily stun the hippo. Presently the water in the pool became violently agitated, and soon the immense beast rolled over on the surface, and I immediately gave it its quietus with a bullet through its brain. Our waiting men gave vent to a yell of delight, and rushed down to secure the carcase; but, to their dismay, before they could reach it the current washed it away and wedged it tightly between two rocks at the top of the small waterfall which gave exit to the pool. The pressure of the water on the body was very great, but the men needed food so badly that we made the most Herculean efforts to dislodge it by the aid of ropes and poles. After an hour’s hard work, we managed to free it, only to be thrown into the utmost consternation by the body sinking immediately to the bottom of the next pool. The men flatly refused to go into the water to look for it, as there were all sorts of queer holes in the rocks into which one could have been washed by the current and crushed or drowned, and in addition, there was the ever-present fear of crocodiles.