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One evening that a large dog of mine had died, belonging to a race peculiar to the Philippines, and exceeding in size any of the canine species of Europe, I had his carcass dragged to the shore of the lake, and hid myself in a little thicket, with my gun ready cocked, in the event of any cayman presenting itself to carry off the bait.
The fish first attacked the wound; then, as the blood maddened them, they attacked all the soft parts, their terrible teeth cutting out chunks of tough hide and flesh. Evidently they did not molest either cayman or capybara while it was unwounded; but blood excited them to frenzy. Their habits are in some ways inexplicable.
Other characters in the ship I shall not describe; some were good, some bad, and some indifferent, but I am happy to remark the first-named preponderated. We made the Grand Cayman, and sent a cutter to the shore to purchase turtle and fruit. In about an hour and a half she came off with three turtle, some yams, plantains, cocoa-nuts, and a few half-starved fowls.
They were very numerous in the still bays, where the huddled crowds jostled together, to the great rattling of their coats of mail, as the steamer passed. The natives at once despise and fear the great cayman. I once spent a month at Caicara, a small village of semi-civilised Indians, about twenty miles to the west of Ega.
He is within three feet of the bank when a something, which looks like a log of charred timber, rises to the surface behind him, two gleaming eyes glare at him, and, with a horrid snap, a pair of serrated jaws close upon his hind quarters, and he is dragged back and under, to furnish a meal to the terrible cayman.
'A man who has crossed the Cordilleras and camped in the primeval forest on the shores of the Amazon, learns to help himself. So this is the Cayman? Muy deleitoso, mi amigo. A floating Paradise in little. If the ark had been like this, I don't think any of the passengers would have wanted the flood to dry up.
Upon the boughs sat parrots, and we were used to them, but we were not used to monkeys which now appeared, to our mariners' delight. We met footprints of some great animal, and presently, being beside a stream, we made out upon a mud bank those crocodiles that the Indians call "cayman." And never have I seen so many and such splendid butterflies.
We paid him every attention till three o'clock in the morning, when, worn out with disappointment, we went to the hammocks, turned in and fell asleep. When day broke we found that he had contrived to get the bait from the hook, though we had tied it on with string. We had now no more hopes of taking a cayman till the return of night.
Edmonstone had very kindly let me have one of his old negroes, and he constantly attended me: his name was Daddy Quashi. He had a brave stomach for heterogeneous food; it could digest and relish, too, caymen, monkeys, hawks and grubs. The Daddy made three or four meals on this cayman while it was not absolutely putrid, and salted the rest.
"All because we didn't hear mass," sighed one. "But what accident has befallen us, ladies?" asked Ibarra. "The cayman seems to have been the only unlucky one." "All of which proves," concluded the ex-student of theology, "that in all its sinful life this unfortunate reptile has never attended mass at least, I've never seen him among the many other caymans that frequent the church."
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