After leaving this bay, they came in a short time to a river which was full of hippopotami. Two huge fellows swam so near the boat that Stanley was afraid they would attack it, and ordered the men to pull away from them. Although hunting these huge beasts might be very exciting sport, and a tolerably safe one in boats properly built, to expose the Lady Alice, with her slender cedar sides, to their tusks would have been a piece of folly close akin to madness. Her safety was of more consequence than all the hippopotami in Africa. He was an explorer, not a hunter; and to risk all the future of the former to gratify the pleasure of the latter would have shown him unfit to command so important an expedition as this. Like the boat that carried Cæsar and his fortunes, the Lady Alice bore in her frail sides destines greater than the imagination can conceive. So hoisting sail they caught the freshening breeze and flew along the ever-changing shore lined with villages, out of which swarmed a vast crowd of people, showing a much more densely populated district than they had yet seen. He found the name of it to be Mahita; and wishing to learn the names of some of the villages he saw, the boat was turned toward shore and anchored within fifty yards of it, but with a cable long enough to let them drift to within a few feet of it. Some half a dozen men wearing small shells above their elbows and a circle round their heads came down to the beach, opening a conversation with them. Stanley learned the name of the country, but they refused to tell him anything more till he landed. While getting ready to do so, he noticed the numbers on the shore increased with astonishing rapidity, and seemed to be greatly excited. This aroused his suspicions, and he ordered the rowers to pull off again. It was lucky he did, for he had scarcely put three lengths between him and the shore, when suddenly out of the bushes on each side of the spot where he was to land arose a forest of spears. Stanley did not intend to go away entirely, but lie off till they became less excited, but this evidence of treachery caused him to change his mind, and he ordered the sail to be hoisted, and moved away toward a point at the mouth of the cove, which, with the wind as it was blowing, they could but little more than clear. The negroes seeing this, sent up a loud shout, and hurried off to reach it before the boat did. Stanley penetrating their design, ordered the sail to be lowered and the rowers to pull dead to windward. The discomfited savages looked on in amazement to see the prize slip through their fingers so easily. It was a narrow escape, for had Stanley landed, he would doubtless have been overpowered and killed before he could use his weapons. It was now late in the afternoon, and the savages made no attempt to follow them, and at dusk, coming to a small island, they tied up and camped for the night, lulled to sleep by the murmur of the waves on the beach.