The animal appeared quite stunned and stupid, and he merely stood and
stared at his new assailants. The sight was perfectly ridiculous. Every
rifle was fired into him; but the hollow bullets of the sniders had no
penetration, and we might as well have peppered the stone bulls of
Nineveh, in the British Museum. At length, after having been the centre
of a blaze of fireworks, as every man did his best to kill him during
the space of about a minute, he coolly approached the edge of the cliff,
which was quite perpendicular and about eighteen feet high.
A tremendous splash was the end of the encounter, as the hippo committed
himself to the deep, with a clumsy jump from the midst of the
disappointed soldiers.
I was constantly annoyed by the want of penetration of the Boxer hollow
bullets. The "Dutchman" carried three drachms of No. 6-grain powder,
which should have driven a solid bullet through a large antelope; but
the hollow Boxer projectile invariably disappeared in small fragments
upon striking a bone; or it expanded, and had no further penetrating
power after striking a thick hide.
The sniders, although admirable military weapons, possessed a very small
power of penetration.
