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This process at an end, we took counsel as to what we should do with the dead cayman. Every one gave his opinion. My wish was to convey it bodily to my residence, but that was impossible; it would have required a vessel of five or six tons burthen, and we could not procure such a craft. One man wanted the skin, the Indians begged for the flesh, to dry it, and use it as a specific against asthma.
Scarcely had we landed when, as with our friend and several Indian attendants we were proceeding along the hanks of the stream, our friend wished to send a message to a cottage on the opposite side to desire the attendance of the master as a guide. There was a ford near, but the Indian who was told to go said he would swim his horse across. "Take care of the cayman," was the warning given by all.
I placed all the people at the end of the rope, and ordered them to pull till the cayman appeared on the surface of the water and then, should he plunge, to slacken the rope and let him go again into the deep. I certainly felt somewhat uncomfortable in this situation, and I thought of Cerberus on the other side of the Styx ferry.
His fourth voyage had increased geographical knowledge by the discovery of the Cayman Islands, Martinique, Guanaja, the Limonare Islands, with the coasts of Honduras, Mosquito, Nicaragua, Veragua, Costa-Rica, Porto-Bello, and Panama, the Mulatas Islands, and the Gulf of Darien. During this, his last voyage across the ocean, Columbus was destined to be again tried by storms.
The English of the district always called them crocodiles, and to me they certainly seemed to differ from the alligator or cayman, whose acquaintance I afterwards made amongst the lagoons of the Southern United States. But to return to our position on the river bank.
Colonel Rondon said that in many villages where he had been on the lower Madeira the people had built stockaded enclosures in the water in which they bathed, not venturing to swim in the open water for fear of the piraiba and the big cayman. Next day, April 8, we made five kilometres only, as there was a succession of rapids.
When a capybara was shot and sank in the water, the piranhas at once attacked it, and had eaten half the carcass ten minutes later. But much more extraordinary was the fact that when a cayman about five feet long was wounded the piranhas attacked and tore it, and actually drove it out on the bank to face its human foes.
"Oh, I care not for caymans; I would fight with a dozen of them!" was the answer given, we were told. The lake and rivers running into it abound with these savage monsters, a species of alligator or crocodile. The man forced his horse into the stream and swam on some way. Suddenly we were startled with the cry of "A cayman! a cayman! Take care, man!"
Ere I fell asleep a reflection or two broke in upon me. I considered that as far as the judgment of civilised man went, everything had been procured and done to ensure success. We had hooks and lines and baits and patience; we had spent nights in watching, had seen the cayman come and take the bait, and after our expectations had been wound up to the highest pitch all ended in disappointment.
My hapless child had seized upon and become entangled in them but, alas! when he came to the surface he was a corpse!" "What! your son?" cried I. "My poor dear José-Maria," said he, "had his head bitten off by a cayman that had got entangled in our nets. Ever since that night that fatal night!