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A wounded leche, chased into any of the lagoons in the Barotse valley, or a man or dog going in for the purpose of bringing out a dead one, is almost sure to be seized, though the alligators may not appear on the surface. When employed in looking for food they keep out of sight; they fish chiefly by night. When eating, they make a loud, champing noise, which when once heard is never forgotten.
No one seemed inclined to break the silence into which they had sunk, for all were more or less fatigued; and it seemed as if the very brutes around sympathised with them, for there was a perceptible lull in the whistling of the frogs, the howling monkeys appeared to have gone to rest, and the sighing alligators to have subsided and sunk, so that the breaking of a twig or the falling of a leaf was perceptible to the listening ear.
The maroro or malolo now appears, and is abundant in many parts between this and Angola. It is a small bush with a yellow fruit, and in its appearance a dwarf "anona". The taste is sweet, and the fruit is wholesome: it is full of seeds, like the custard-apple. On the 28th we slept at a spot on the right bank from which had just emerged two broods of alligators.
We were within an inch of the bank, the tide running like a sluice, and should have turned the turtle the moment that we had struck. Such a thing as carrying politeness too far. If I had not twisted the wheel out of her hands as I did, in two minutes more the alligators would have divided her pretty carcase, and all the rest of us to boot.
Amphibious creatures, alligators, serpents, and wild fowl, haunt these yet but half-formed regions, where land and water are of the consistency of hasty-pudding the one seeming too unstable to walk on, the other almost too thick to float in.
Eustace Hignett shrivelled in the blaze. He was filled with an unendurable sense of guilt. "Well er yes," he mumbled weakly. Jane Hubbard buried her face in her hands and burst into tears. She might know what to do when alligators started exploring her tent, but she was a woman.
This morning the Brothers, taking old Eulah with them, swam across the creek, alligators notwithstanding, and walked to the top of a high stringy-bark ridge on the south side. Before him, at about 3 miles distant lay the mouth of the river, about 2 miles wide.
He soon recovered consciousness, and, being carried to the camp, his leg was amputated below the knee, and he was soon afterwards taken down to the coast. It had been known that there were alligators in the river, a young one about a yard long having been captured and tied up like a dog in the camp, with a string round its neck.
"I will watch and wait," said he to himself, when the old slave had left him alone with his reflections, "but no longer with patience and submission. I will cease to be a slave, or I will die a freeman with the herons and the alligators in the swamp."
"Be ready to fire," said Brace hurriedly. "It is sure to come up again to try and creep into a tree." "No," said Briscoe quietly. "He won't show himself again for hours." "Nonsense," said Brace impatiently; "it would be drowned." Briscoe smiled good-humouredly. "Drowned?" he said. "Just about as much as an eel would. Nice place this for a bathe, what with the alligators and the anacondas.
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