knee deep up the little stream.  Keeping the bunches of grass between us, I ran up the beach, aimed at his eye and this time hit him fairly enough.  With a snort he rose high in the air, and so, for an instant, balanced his enormous bulk.  The action was like that of a horse that rears on his hind legs, when he is whipped over the nose.  And apparently my bullet hurt him no more than the whip the horse, for he dropped heavily to all fours, and again disappeared into the muddy river.  Our disappointment and chagrin were intense, and at once Anfossi and I organized a hunt for that evening.  To encourage us, while we were sitting on the bridge making a hasty dinner, another hippopotamus had the impertinence to rise, blowing like a whale, not ten feet from where we sat.  We could have thrown our tin cups and hit him; but he was in the water, and now we were seeking only those on land.

 [Illustration:  Mr. Davis and Native “Boy,” on the Kasai River.]

Two years ago when the atrocities along the Kasai made the natives fear the white man and the white man fear the natives, each of the river boats was furnished with a stand of Albini rifles.  Three of the black soldiers, who were keen sportsmen, were served with these muskets, and as soon as the moon rose, the soldiers and Anfossi, my black boy, with an extra gun, and I set forth to clear the island of hippos.  To the stranger it was a most curious hunt.  The island was perfectly flat and bare, and the river had eaten into it and overflowed it with tiny rivulets and deep, swift-running streams.  Into these rivulets and streams the soldiers plunged, one in front, feeling the depth of the water with a sounding rod, and as he led we followed.  The black men made a splendid picture.  They were naked but for breech-cloths, and the moonlight flashed on their wet skins and upon the polished barrels of the muskets.  But, as a sporting proposition, as far as I could see, we had taken on the hippopotamus at his own game.  We were supposed to be on an island, but the water was up to our belts and running at five miles an hour.  I could not understand why we had not openly and aboveboard walked into the river.  Wading waist high in the water with a salmon rod I could understand, but not swimming around in a river with a gun.  The force of the shallowest stream was the force of the great river behind it, and wherever you put your foot, the current, on its race to the sea, annoyed at the impediment, washed the sand from under the sole of your foot and tugged at your knees and ankles.  To add to the interest the three soldiers held their muskets at full cock, and as they staggered for a footing each pointed his gun at me.  There also was a strange fish about the size of an English sole that sprang out of the water and hurled himself through space.  Each had a white belly, and as they skimmed past us in the moonlight it was as though some one was throwing dinner plates.  After we had swum the length of the English Channel, we returned to the boat.  As to that midnight hunt I am still uncertain as to whether we were hunting the hippos or the hippos were hunting us.