THE LAST FRONTIER 



for the other hippos bellow and snort and generally 

 try to live up to the circus posters of the Blood- 

 sweating Behemoth of Holy Writ, and the crocodiles 

 like dark meat very much. Usually one offers es- 

 pecial reward to volunteers, and shoots into the 

 water to frighten the beasts. The volunteer dashes 

 rapidly across the shallows, makes a swift plunge, 

 and clambers out on the floating body as onto a raft. 



Then he makes fast the rope, and everybody tails on 

 and tows the whole outfit ashore. On one occasion 

 the volunteer produced a fish line and actually 

 caught a small fish from the floating carcass! This 

 sounds like a good one; but I saw it with my own 

 two eyes. 



It was at the hippo pool camp that we first be- 

 came acquainted with Funny Face. 



Funny Face was the smallest, furriest little soft 

 monkey you ever saw. I never cared for monkeys 

 before; but this one was altogether engaging. He 

 had thick soft fur almost like that on a Persian cat, 

 and a tiny human black face, and hands that emerged 

 from a ruff ; and he was about as big as old-fashioned 

 dolls used to be before they began to try to imitate 

 real babies with them. That is to say, he was 

 that big when we said farewell to him. When we 

 first knew him, had he stood in a half pint measure 

 he could just have seen over the rim. We caught 



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