{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. Thus it came about that in attempting
to show off we had committed sacrilege of a most aggravated nature.
When our guide had finished his tale, the old man with the long
beard and round cap, whose appearance I have already described,
and who was, as I have said, the High Priest of the country,
and known by the name of Agon, rose and commenced an impassioned
harangue. I did not like the look of his cold grey eye as he
fixed it on us. I should have liked it still less had I known
that in the name of the outraged majesty of his god he was demanding
that the whole lot of us should be offered up as a sacrifice
by means of being burnt alive.
After he had finished speaking the Queen Sorais addressed him
in a soft and musical voice, and appeared, to judge from his
gestures of dissent, to be putting the other side of the question
before him. Then Nyleptha spoke in liquid accents.
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