XII 
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS 
n 
heard at a few yards’ distance in the darkness, 
and the next moment you may be overturned by 
an attack from beneath, where the enemy was 
unseen. I have sometimes been benighted when 
in an open boat, having been exploring through¬ 
out the day; in returning across a lake, guided 
by the well-known signal (a red light hoisted 
at the masthead of my diahbeeah), I have heard 
the snorts and the threatening splashing of 
hippopotami around our dinghy, momentarily 
expecting a blow from below that would send 
us flying, and capsize us helplessly in the dark. 
All of my boats were more or less damaged by 
hippopotami in the course of three years’ work 
upon the upper Nile. On one occasion there 
was a boat full of sheep being towed astern of the 
diahbeeah, which was going 6 or 7 knots before a 
favourable wind, when a hippopotamus suddenly 
charged from beneath, threw the boat completely 
out of the water, knocked a big hole in her 
bottom, and capsized her with all the sheep, 
every one of which was drowned. On another 
occasion we were in a very large flat-bottomed 
canoe, cut out of a single tree. The floor of this 
was at the least 3 or 4 inches thick, and happily 
it was a tough quality of wood. This heavy 
canoe was 27 feet in length, but when approach¬ 
ing a bank of high reeds, a hippopotamus charged 
from beneath, and struck the bottom with such 
force that the canoe was actually lifted partially 
from the water; had it been an ordinary boat, 
