ON THE REWERO 
119 
CH. V] 
matter of personal idiosyncrasy as the choice of a friend. 
The above must be taken as merely the expression of 
my personal preferences. It will doubtless arouse as 
much objection among the ultra-champions of one type 
of gun as among the ultra-champions of another. The 
truth is that any good modern rifle is good enough. 
The determining factor is the man behind the gun. 
In the afternoon of the day on which we killed the 
rhino Judd took me out again to try for hippos, this 
time in the Rewero, which ran close by the house. We 
rode upstream a couple of miles. Then we sent back 
our horses, and walked down the river bank as quietly 
as possible, Judd scanning the pools and the eddies in 
the running stream from every point of vantage. Once 
we aroused a crocodile, which plunged into the water. 
The stream was full of fish, some of considerable size ; 
and in the meadow land on our side we saw a flock of 
big, black wild-geese feeding. But we got within half 
a mile of McMillan’s house without seeing a hippo, and 
the light was rapidly fading. Judd announced that we 
would go home, but took one last look around the next 
bend, and instantly sank to his knees, beckoning to me. 
I crept forward on all-fours, and he pointed out to me 
an object in the stream, fifty yards off, under the over¬ 
hanging branch of a tree, which jutted out from the 
steep bank opposite. In that light I should not myself 
have recognized it as a hippo head ; but it was one, 
looking toward us, with the ears up and the nostrils, 
eyes, and forehead above water. I aimed for the centre ; 
the sound told that the bullet had struck somewhere on 
the head, and the animal disappeared without a splash. 
Judd was sure I had killed, but I was by no means so 
confident myself, and there was no way of telling until 
next morning, for the hippo always sinks when shot, 
