and his heart shrank back from the untried homeless wilderness before him.

But no! the die was cast, and he must down and onward, whether in obedience to the spirit or the flesh.

Oh, for one hour of the quiet of that dear Laura and the old familiar faces! At last, a sudden turn of the bank brought him in sight of a gaudily-painted barge, oil board of which armed men, in uncouth and foreign dresses, were chasing with barbaric shouts some large object in the water.

In the bows stood a man of gigantic stature, brandishing a harpoon in his right hand, and in his left holding the line of a second, the head of which was fixed in the huge purple sides of a hippopotamus, who foamed and wallowed a few yards down the stream.

An old grizzled warrior at the stern, with a rudder in either hand, kept the boat's head continually towards the monster, in spite of its sudden and frantic wheelings; and when it dashed madly across the stream, some twenty oars flashed through the water in pursuit.