I Drop My
Needlework And Take To The Deck; But It Is After All Only That Shy
Retiring Young Man Practising Secretly On His Clarionet.
The Captain is drowsily looking down the river.
But repose is not
long allowed to that active spirit; he sees something in the water -
what? "Hippopotame," he ejaculates. Now both he and the Engineer
frequently do this thing, and then fly off to their guns - bang,
bang, finish; but this time he does not dash for his gun, nor does
the Engineer, who flies out of his cabin at the sound of the war
shout "Hippopotame." In vain I look across the broad river with its
stretches of yellow sandbanks, where the "hippopotame" should be,
but I can see nothing but four black stumps sticking up in the water
away to the right. Meanwhile the Captain and the Engineer are
flying about getting off a crew of blacks into the canoe we are
towing alongside. This being done the Captain explains to me that
on the voyage up "the Engineer had fired at, and hit a hippopotamus,
and without doubt this was its body floating." We are now close
enough even for me to recognise the four stumps as the deceased's
legs, and soon the canoe is alongside them and makes fast to one,
and then starts to paddle back, hippo and all, to the Eclaireur.
But no such thing; let them paddle and shout as hard as they like,
the hippo's weight simply anchors them. The Eclaireur by now has
dropped down the river past them, and has to sweep round and run
back. Recognising promptly what the trouble is, the energetic
Captain grabs up a broom, ties a light cord belonging to the
leadline to it, and holding the broom by the end of its handle,
swings it round his head and hurls it at the canoe. The arm of a
merciful Providence being interposed, the broom-tomahawk does not
hit the canoe, wherein, if it had, it must infallibly have killed
some one, but falls short, and goes tearing off with the current,
well out of reach of the canoe. The Captain seeing this gross
dereliction of duty by a Chargeur Reunis broom, hauls it in hand
over hand and talks to it. Then he ties the other end of its line
to the mooring rope, and by a better aimed shot sends the broom into
the water, about ten yards above the canoe, and it drifts towards
it. Breathless excitement! surely they will get it now. Alas, no!
Just when it is within reach of the canoe, a fearful shudder runs
through the broom. It throws up its head and sinks beneath the
tide. A sensation of stun comes over all of us. The crew of the
canoe, ready and eager to grasp the approaching aid, gaze blankly at
the circling ripples round where it sank. In a second the Captain
knows what has happened. That heavy hawser which has been paid out
after it has dragged it down, so he hauls it on board again.
The Eclaireur goes now close enough to the hippo-anchored canoe for
a rope to be flung to the man in her bows; he catches it and freezes
on gallantly. Saved! No! Oh horror! The lower deck hums with
fear that after all it will not taste that toothsome hippo chop, for
the man who has caught the rope is as nearly as possible jerked
flying out of the canoe when the strain of the Eclaireur contending
with the hippo's inertia flies along it, but his companion behind
him grips him by the legs and is in his turn grabbed, and the crew
holding on to each other with their hands, and on to their craft
with their feet, save the man holding on to the rope and the whole
situation; and slowly bobbing towards us comes the hippopotamus, who
is shortly hauled on board by the winners in triumph.
My esteemed friends, the Captain and the Engineer, who of course
have been below during this hauling, now rush on to the upper deck,
each coatless, and carrying an enormous butcher's knife. They dash
into the saloon, where a terrific sharpening of these instruments
takes place on the steel belonging to the saloon carving-knife, and
down stairs again. By looking down the ladder, I can see the pink,
pig-like hippo, whose colour has been soaked out by the water, lying
on the lower deck and the Captain and Engineer slitting down the
skin intent on gralloching operations. Providentially, my prophetic
soul induces me to leave the top of the ladder and go forward - "run
to win'ard," as Captain Murray would say - for within two minutes the
Captain and Engineer are up the ladder as if they had been blown up
by the boilers bursting, and go as one man for the brandy bottle;
and they wanted it if ever man did; for remember that hippo had been
dead and in the warm river-water for more than a week.
The Captain had had enough of it, he said, but the Engineer stuck to
the job with a courage I profoundly admire, and he saw it through
and then retired to his cabin; sand-and-canvassed himself first, and
then soaked and saturated himself in Florida water. The flesh
gladdened the hearts of the crew and lower-deck passengers and also
of the inhabitants of Lembarene, who got dashes of it on our arrival
there. Hippo flesh is not to be despised by black man or white; I
have enjoyed it far more than the stringy beef or vapid goat's flesh
one gets down here.
I stayed on board the Eclaireur all night; for it was dark when we
reached Lembarene, too dark to go round to Kangwe; and next morning,
after taking a farewell of her - I hope not a final one, for she is a
most luxurious little vessel for the Coast, and the feeding on board
is excellent and the society varied and charming - I went round to
Kangwe.
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