The arriving wind overswept the little whirlpools they all made in the moonlight, as they dived to seek seclusion somewhere and no doubt to choose themselves a new bully after terrific fighting.
Our quarry plunged a last time, and stayed under.

Now was new anxiety.
In twenty minutes or half an hour he should rise to the surface again, but no man could guess where, and the wind and currents would very swiftly hide his great carcass somewhere amid the acres of papyrus unless sharp eyes were alert.
But the papyrus was friend as well as foe.

In a space of time to be measured by seconds the yelling young men of the tribe had uncovered three canoes, hidden from marauding enemies among the more-than-man-high reeds, and the rest of the tribe--men, women and young ones--scattered along the shore to watch from between the stalks.
In less than fifteen minutes some one yelled, and even the very old men, who had stayed beside us to gape at Fred's rifle and our clothes and boots, began running like hares toward the sound.

In twenty minutes after that, with the aid of grass ropes and leather thongs, they had hauled the huge carcass to the shore and rolled it out of the water, where it lay glistening in moonlight, stumpy, foolish, legs uppermost.
The butcher's work----the feast--did not begin yet.

There was time-honored custom to obey, which Kazimoto knew all about even if those ignorant wachenzie* would have fallen to without ceremony.