him with sticks of firewood, trying to rope him with the steel hawser.
On the bridge Captain Jensen and Anfossi were giving orders in Danish
and Italian, and on the bank I swore in American. Everybody shoved and
pushed and beat at the great bulk, and the great bulk rolled steadily
on. We might as well have tried to budge the Fifth Avenue Hotel. He
reached the bank, he crushed it beneath him, and, like a suspension
bridge, splashed into the water. Even then, we who watched him thought
he would stick fast between the boat and the bank, that the hawser would
hold him. But he sank like a submarine, and we stood gaping at the muddy
water and saw him no more. When I recovered from my first rage I was
glad he was still alive to float in the sun and puff and blow and open
his great jaws in a luxurious yawn. I could imagine his joining his
friends after his meeting with us, and remarking in reference to our
bullets: "I find the mosquitoes are quite bad this morning." With this
chapter is published the photograph Anfossi took, from the deck of the
steamer, of our hippo--the hippo that was too stupid to know when he was
dead. It is not a good photograph, but of our hippo it is all we have to
show. I am still undecided whether to hang it in the hall or the
dining-room. [Illustration: The Hippopotamus that Did Not Know He Was
Dead.] The days I spent on my trip up the river were of delightful
sameness, sunshine by day, with the great panorama drifting past, and
quiet nights of moonlight. For diversion, there were many hippos,
crocodiles, and monkeys, and, though we saw only their tracks and heard
them only in the jungle, great elephants. And innumerable strange
birds--egrets, eagles, gray parrots, crimson cranes, and giant
flamingoes--as tall as a man an