She runs beneath the tall trees, looking up for the small brown bird; then she stops and listens to hear him again, when close beside her comes the call, “Chiken, chiken, chik, churr, churr,” and there sits the brown bird above a hole in the tree, where the bees are flying in and out, their legs yellow with honey-dust.  It is too high for Manenko to reach, but she marks the place and says to herself:  “I will tell Ra when he comes home.”  Who is Ra?  Why, that is her name for “father.”  She turns to go home, but stops to listen to the wild shouts and songs of the women who have left the huts and are coming down towards the river to welcome their chief with lulliloo, praising him by such strange names as “Great lion,” “Great buffalo.”

The chief comes from a long journey with the young men up the river in canoes, to hunt the elephant, and bring home the ivory tusks, from which we have many beautiful things made.  The canoes are full of tusks, and, while the men unload them, the women are shouting:  “Sleep, my lord, my great chief.”  Manenko listens while she stands under the trees,—­listens for only a minute, and then runs to join her mother and add her little voice to the general noise.

The chief is very proud and happy to bring home such a load; before sunset it will all be carried up to the huts, the men will dress in their very best, and walk in a gay procession.  Indeed, they can’t dress much; no coats or hats or nicely polished boots have they to put on, but some will have the white ends of oxen’s tails in their hair, some a plume of black ostrich feathers, and the chief himself has a very grand cap made from the yellow mane of an old lion.  The drum will beat, the women will shout, while the men gather round a fire, and roast and eat great slices of ox-meat, and tell the story of their famous elephant-hunt.  How they came to the bushes with fine, silvery leaves and sweet bark, which the elephant eats, and there hiding, watched and waited many hours, until the ground shook, with the heavy tread of a great mother-elephant and her two calves, coming up from the river, where they had been to drink.  Their trunks were full of water, and they tossed them up, spouting the water like a fine shower-bath over their hot heads and backs, and now, cooled and refreshed, began to eat the silvery leaves of the bushes.  Then the hunters threw their spears thick and fast; after two hours, the great creature lay still upon the ground,—­she was dead.

So day after day they had hunted, loading the canoes with ivory, and sailing far up the river; far up where the tall rushes wave, twisted together by the twining morning-glory vines; far up where the alligators make great nests in the river-bank, and lay their eggs, and stretch themselves in the sunshine, half asleep inside their scaly armor; far up where the hippopotamus is standing in his drowsy dream on the bottom of the river, with the water covering him, head and all.  He is a great, sleepy fellow, not unlike a very large, dark-brown pig, with a thick skin and no hair.  Here he lives under the water all day, only once in a while poking up his nose for a breath of fresh air.  And here is the mother-hippopotamus, with her baby standing upon her neck, that he may be nearer the top of the water.  Think how funny he must look.