Clearly they could not understand how we had reached the lake and been found floating on it, and were inclined to attribute our presence to supernatural causes.
Then the narrative proceeded, as I judged from the frequent appeals that our guide made to the girl, to the point where we had shot the hippopotami, and we at once perceived that there was something very wrong about those hippopotami, for the history was frequently interrupted by indignant exclamations from the little group of white-robed priests and even from the courtiers, while the two Queens listened with an amazed expression, especially when our guide pointed to the rifles in our hands as being the means of destruction.

And here, to make matters clear, I may as well explain at once that the inhabitants of Zu-Vendis are sun-worshippers, and that for some reason or another the hippopotamus is sacred among them.

Not that they do not kill it, because at a certain season of the year they slaughter thousands -- which are specially preserved in large lakes up the country -- and use their hides for armour for soldiers; but this does not prevent them from considering these animals as sacred to the sun.

{Endnote 11} Now, as ill luck would have it, the particular hippopotami we had shot were a family of tame animals that were kept in the mouth of the port and daily fed by priests whose special duty it was to attend to them.

When we shot them I thought that the brutes were suspiciously tame, and this was, as we afterwards ascertained, the cause of it.