248 



THE BIG BAG. 



and as the game rises again, matchlocks bang 

 dangerously as pop -guns. Presently the Jemadar, 

 having expended three bullets — a serious consid- 

 eration with your Oriental pot-hunter — retires 

 from the contest, as we knew he would, recom- 

 mending the beasts to us. Bombay punches on 

 the boatmen, who complain that a dollar a day 

 does not justify their facing death. At last a 

 coup de grace, speeding through the ear, finds out 

 the small brain ; the brute sinks, fresh gore pur- 

 j)les the surface, and bright bubbles seethe up 

 from the bottom. Hippo, has departed this life : 

 we wait patiently for his reappearance, but he 

 reappears not. At length Bombay's sharp eye 

 detects a dark object some hundred yards down 

 stream : we make for it, and find our ' bag ' 

 brought up in a shallow by a spit of sand, and 

 already in process of being ogled by a large fish- 

 hawk. The fish-hawk pays the penalty of impu- 

 dence. We tow the big defunct to the bank, 

 and deliver it to a little knot of savages, who 

 have flocked down to the stream with mouths 

 watering at the prospect of creek-bullock beef. 

 The meat is lawful to Moslems of the Shafei 

 school ; others reject it, as, being amphibious, it 

 is impure. In Abyssinia they commonly eat it ; 

 here they do not. The insuff*erable toughness 



