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“The second mate wanted to try it, but I wouldn’t resign the gun to him. In extreme emergencies, you know, an officer loses his superiority; he becomes a mere man, like the rest. Every time I tickled the brute with a bullet he would come charging aft, but never stopped still when within easy range. Not seeing anyone, he would wheel and go back to his duty at the forward house. To tell the truth, I was a little nervous lest he should be able to mount the poop and get at us.

“The old hippo was happy, swimming and snorting round in the water; and the rhino seemed to have forgotten his grudge, busying himself with his real enemies, human beings. There were about sixteen of these on the forward house, and I noticed that they had ceased the work of stocking the boat, and judged that there was no more grub forward.

“‘I say, cap’n,’ I called out, ‘put some grub and water in the other boat. One boat won’t hold us all.’

“‘You go to the dickens!’ he answered. ‘What are you doing in my cabin? Didn’t I tell you to keep out of it?’

“‘Go yourself!’ I yelled. Then I said to the men with me: ‘Raid the steward’s storeroom and fill your pockets with what you can find. Pack the inside of your shirts.’

“They could find nothing eatable except soda biscuits, and they cleaned out the locker. But there was no water aft.

“Meanwhile the bark was getting lower and lower, and the rhino, to escape the wash, had drifted farther forward. I had wasted twelve bullets by this time, and had but three left. It was best, of course, to kill him before the bark foundered, so that we could get into that port boat and induce the rest to pass over some grub and water. But this was not to be.

“I killed him, all right, but only after we had rushed out at the death flurry of the old craft, floundered forward, seizing handspikes from the racks on the way, and gained the vicinity of the house. Here that murder-minded rhino met us, and I jammed the muzzle into one eye.

“The bullet touched some part of his brain, for he sagged down and grew quiet. And while we mounted the house, the asses and zebras were hee-hawing, the wolf was barking, and the mad elephant, waving his trunk up through the hatch, was trumpeting like a high-pressure exhaust.

“We were just in time. The others had got into the starboard boat, and we bundled into the port. There was no time for a decent launching over the rail, but there was time to sing out for grub and water. The skipper and mate consigned us to the infernal regions.

“‘There’s not enough to go round,’ he declared. ‘Take your chance. It’s better that part should starve than all.’

“I still had the gun, and had there been time I could have coerced them; but there was no time. In a minute the water had reached the top of the house.

“Then, as the boats floated in the creamy turmoil, we pushed with the oars, and, though half swamped, managed to clear the fore-braces as they went under. There was a mighty roaring of water, and a mighty suction, but the two boats floated, though half full.

“Then we saw that blooming old hippo rise out of the depths and head for us. We shipped the oars and pulled like mad, but we’d gone a quarter of a mile through that heavy sea before we dropped him.

“We couldn’t have helped him; he’d have swamped us in a jiffy if he’d got his nose and forepaws over the gunwale. We chewed dry soda biscuits for three days, and were then picked up.”

“But the others, Sam?” I asked. “Were they picked up?”

“No,” answered Sam with a perceptible quaver in his voice. “They were not. The wolf, the zebras, and the asses could swim, and so could the monkeys, and snakes, after a fashion.

“I don’t know what trouble they may or may not have had with these. What I did see, though, as I pulled stroke oar in the race with the hippo, was the big head of the elephant showing occasionally as we rode over the crest of a wave.

“He was waving his trunk in the air, and making for the other boat. They were pulling as hard as we were, but to less avail. They were overladen with men and grub. Each lift of a sea showed them nearer together.

“Then we sank into a hollow.

“When we came up I saw nothing but that waving trunk.”