That evening the queen said to Keo, who was growing to be a fine child for his age:
"I wish you'd run across the bend and ask your Uncle Nikki to come here. I have found a strange plant, and want him to tell me if it is good to eat."
The jolly one laughed heartily as he started upon his errand, for he felt as important as a boy does when he is sent for the first time to the corner grocery to buy a yeast cake.
"Guk-uk-uk-uk! guk-uk-uk-uk!" was the way he laughed; and if you think a hippopotamus does not laugh this way you have but to listen to one and you will find I am right.
He crawled out of the mud where he was wallowing and tramped away through the bushes, and the last his mother heard as she lay half in and half out of the water was his musical "guk-uk-uk-uk!" dying away in the distance.
Keo was in such a happy mood that he scarcely noticed where he stepped, so he was much surprised when, in the middle of a laugh, the ground gave way beneath him, and he fell to the bottom of Gouie's deep pit. He was not badly hurt, but had bumped his nose severely as he went down; so he stopped laughing and began to think how he should get out again. Then he found the walls were higher than his head, and that he was a prisoner.
So he laughed a little at his own misfortune, and the laughter soothed him to sleep, so that he snored all through the night until daylight came.
When Gouie peered over the edge of the pit next morning he exclaimed:
"Why, 'tis Ippi--the Jolly One!"
Keo recognized the scent of a black man and tried to raise his head high enough to bite him. Seeing which Gouie spoke in the hippopotamus language, which he had learned from his grandfather, the sorcerer.
"Have peace, little one; you are my captive."
"Yes; I will have a piece of your leg, if I can reach it," retorted Keo; and then he laughed at his own joke: "Guk-uk-uk-uk!"
But Gouie, being a thoughtful black man, went away without further talk, and did not return until the following morning. When he again leaned over the pit Keo was so weak from hunger that he could hardly laugh at all.
"Do you give up?" asked Gouie, "or do you still wish to fight?"
"What will happen if I give up?" inquired Keo.
The black man scratched his woolly head in perplexity.
"It is hard to say, Ippi. You are too young to work, and if I kill you for food I shall lose your tusks, which are not yet grown. Why, O Jolly One, did you fall into my hole? I wanted to catch your mother or one of your uncles."
"Guk-uk-uk-uk!" laughed Keo. "You must let me go, after all, black man; for I am of no use to you!"
"That I will not do," declared Gouie; "unless," he added, as an afterthought, "you will make a bargain with me."
"Let me hear about the bargain, black one, for I am hungry," said Keo.
"I will let your go if you swear by the tusks of your grandfather that you will return to me in a year and a day and become my prisoner again."
The youthful hippopotamus paused to think, for he knew it was a solemn thing to swear by the tusks of his grandfather; but he was exceedingly hungry, and a year and a day seemed a long time off; so he said, with another careless laugh:
"Very well; if you will now let me go I swear by the tusks of my grandfather to return to you in a year and a day and become your prisoner."
Gouie was much pleased, for he knew that in a year and a day Keo would be almost full grown. So he began digging away one end of the pit and filling it up with the earth until he had made an incline which would allow the hippopotamus to climb out.
Keo was so pleased when he found himself upon the surface of the earth again that he indulged in a merry fit of laughter, after which he said:
"Good-by, Gouie; in a year and a day you will see me again."
Then he waddled away toward the river to see his mother and get his breakfast, and Gouie returned to his village.
During the months that followed, as the black man lay in his hut or hunted in the forest, he heard at times the faraway "Guk-uk-uk-uk!" of the laughing hippopotamus.