Читать книгу Meridiana: The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians. In South Africa онлайн

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"I was mistaken; the noise I thought I heard was nothing but the breeze among the leaves or the murmur of the water over the stones at the edge; and yet——"

The hunter listened again, but again heard nothing.

"Mokoum," then said Mr. William Emery, "if the noise you thought you heard is caused by the machinery of a steamboat, you would hear better by stooping to the level of the river; water always conducts sound more clearly and quickly than air."

"You are right, Mr. William," answered Mokoum, "for more than once I have found out the passage of a hippopotamus across the river in that way."

The bushman went nimbly down the bank, clinging to the creepers and tufts of grass on his way. When he got to the level of the river, he went in to his knees, and stooping down, laid his ear close to the water.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, in a few minutes, "I was not mistaken; there is a sound, some miles down, as if the waters were being violently beaten; it is a continual monotonous splashing which is introduced into the current."