144 ON SAFARI 



Februnry 14,1 managed to place a '450 solid ball within 

 some decimals of that spot with manifest and immediate 

 results, the huge bull rolling over and over, wallowing 

 in the water for over half-an-hour, all ends up. Now 

 his four stumpy legs were in sight, anon the vast head 

 and fore-end reared up to fall back with sounding splash, 

 churning the still green surface into crimson foam. 

 After thirty minutes of this flurry, this apparent death 

 agony, the beast subsided, though we could still hear 

 grunts and groans from the depths below. I left men 

 to watch for his reappearance, and at five that afternoon 

 was gratified to receive the report, " Him finish." 



Next morning we set out at 4 a.m., twenty hands, 

 with ropes and axes and the rest to bring him in. But 

 it jDroved a day of bitter disappointment — the cup 

 dashed from one's lips ! For not a sign of this, or of 

 my other wounded hippo, did we ever see : whether a 

 hippo can recover from such a blow,^ or whether he 

 goes ashore to die, at least the trophies were lost to me, 

 and no better luck had befallen my brother. After this 

 week of labour, up half the nights and most of the 

 days, struggling through the roughest places on earth, 

 canebrakes, thorn-jungle, cruel rocks and lava, under 

 an equatorial sun, or a waning moon — the hippo had 

 beaten us. 



On Lake Elmenteita we noticed the assemblages of 

 swallows preparing for their northward journey. The 

 earliest of these mobilisations occurred on February 14, 

 when they congregated in thousands on the islets, 

 crowding the low thorns. By February 17 all these 

 swallows had passed on ; but we observed similar assem- 

 blages at various other points up to the end of March. 



On the afternoon of February 13, during a heavy 

 shower of rain, we enjoyed quite a chorus of song-birds ; 

 but this ceased on the sun coming out an hour or so 

 later. On the 15th a skylark (of sorts) began to sing. 

 Its note was inferior to that of our species ; but its 



^ Mr. Jackson widtes me : " They do recover." See also his 

 remarks in Big Game Shooting, Badminton Library, I, p. 273. 



