He said that we must start at dawn on the following morning when, at this time of the year, the wind generally blew off shore, and that if the weather were favourable, we should reach the Pongo town of Rica by nightfall.

As to how we were to do this, he would show me if I cared to follow him.

I nodded, and he led me four or five hundred yards along the edge of the reeds in a southerly direction.
As we went, two things happened.

The first of these was that a very large, black rhinoceros, which was sleeping in some bushes, suddenly got our wind and, after the fashion of these beasts, charged down on us from about fifty yards away.

Now I was carrying a heavy, single-barrelled rifle, for as yet we and our weapons were not parted.