chattering and smiling, with pretty little shrieks and shaking of
glossy curls and gold necklaces, and fluttering of muslin dresses,
within a dozen yards of him! Blushing scarlet, he knew not why, he
seized his paddle, and tried to back out of the snare .... but
somehow, his very efforts to escape those sparkling eyes diverted
his attention from everything else: the hippopotamus had caught
sight of him, and furious with pain, rushed straight at the
unoffending canoe; the harpoon line became entangled round his body,
and in a moment he and his frail bark were overturned, and the
monster, with his huge white tusks gaping wide, close on him as he
struggled in the stream.

Luckily Philammon, contrary to the wont of monks, was a bather, and
swam like a water-fowl: fear he had never known: death from
childhood had been to him, as to the other inmates of the Laura, a
contemplation too perpetual to have any paralysing terror in it,
even then, when life seemed just about to open on him anew. But the
monk was a man, and a young one, and had no intention of dying
tamely or unavenged. In an instant he had freed himself from the
line; drawn the short knife which was his only weapon; and diving
suddenly, avoided the monster's rush, and attacked him from behind
with stabs, which, though not deep, still dyed the waters with gore
at every stroke. The barbarians shouted with delight. The
hippopotamus turned furiously against his new assailant, crushing,
alas! the empty canoe to fragments with a single snap of his
enormous jaws; but the turn was fatal to him; the barge was close
upon him, and as he presented his broad side to the blow, the sinewy
arm of the giant drove a harpoon through his heart, and with one
convulsive shudder the huge blue mass turned over on its side and
floated dead.