When we were two hundred yards from the reeds they were not more than fifty or sixty yards behind, and then the real struggle began.
It was short but terrible.

We threw everything we could overboard, including the ballast stones at the bottom of the canoe and the heavy hide of the gorilla.

This, as it proved, was fortunate, since the thing sank but slowly and the foremost Pongo boats halted a minute to recover so precious a relic, checking the others behind them, a circumstance that helped us by twenty or thirty yards.
"Over with the plant!" I said.
But Stephen, looking quite old from exhaustion and with the sweat streaming from him as he laboured at his unaccustomed paddle, gasped: "For Heaven's sake, no, after all we have gone through to get it." So I didn't insist; indeed there was neither time nor breath for argument.
Now we were in the reeds, for thanks to the flag which guided us, we had struck the big hippopotamus lane exactly, and the Pongos, paddling like demons, were about thirty yards behind.

Thankful was I that those interesting people had never learned the use of bows and arrows, and that their spears were too heavy to throw.

By now, or rather some time before, old Babemba and the Mazitu had seen us, as had our Zulu hunters.
Crowds of them were wading through the shallows towards us, yelling encouragements as they came.