If I hoisted my anchor, the canoe would drift right on to him, and a sudden movement on his part would be enough to send me to the bottom. It was excessively awkward, for I was anxious to start, and equally anxious to get away from his immediate neighbourhood. I thought of trying the effect of a sudden shout, but I could not tell how he would take it, and he was so very large. Presently he yawned, offering for my inspection a most remarkable collection of very yellow teeth, and I hoped he was becoming bored; but when he closed his cavernous mouth, he resumed his consideration of the canoe with unabated interest. As he was apparently a fixture, I set about extricating myself from my unpleasant position. Putting the helm hard over and lashing it, I began to slowly haul in the cable until the canoe swung round across the current, clear of the hippopotamus. Then I dropped the sinker and pulled up the anchor, and immediately my bark began to move obliquely down stream and out into the main current. The hippopotamus gazed regretfully at the retreating canoe, and when it had passed some distance, to my dismay, he walked into the deeper water and began to swim slowly after it. It was not long before he came abreast and passed, when he turned his head up-stream and floated down with his eyes fixed on the canoe, from which he maintained a distance of a few yards. Clearly his intentions were not hostile; but, although prompted apparently by mere curiosity, his proceedings caused me considerable uneasiness, and I continued to watch him so closely that I had drifted into a new danger without observing it. Half-way down the reach that I had just entered, a long canoe was putting off from the bank, and the eight or nine men in her had evidently noticed my canoe, for they were standing up, staring in my direction and pointing, while they shouted to some people on the shore. As I came nearer I could see quite a considerable crowd on the bank, and it was manifest that my vessel and its strange companion were the objects of keen curiosity, for the people on the bank as well as those in the canoe gazed steadily at the approaching phenomenon. The hippopotamus floated on, stern foremost, all unconscious of the spectators, while I, crouching inside the tilt (although the rain had ceased), was concealed from view; but, as the native canoe was being poled up on the shallow side of the river, apparently with the object of intercepting my vessel, I thought it time to make my appearance. I therefore tied on my wig (the horns of which rendered it highly inconvenient inside the tilt), and as the canoe pushed off to meet me, I thrust my head out through the opening. The first person who saw me was a man in the bow of the dug-out, and he announced his discovery by upsetting three of his companions in a frantic attempt to get to the other end of the craft, and finally falling on top of them yelling like a maniac.