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People may perhaps complain because a pea rifle with a mere pinch of powder may be inefficient, but a common No. 16 fowling-piece, with two drachms of powder, will penetrate any crocodile that was ever hatched. Among the most harmless kinds are those which inhabit the salt lakes in the south of Ceylon.
A huge crocodile was dragging off the other. He had dragged it under the water before we could reach the spot. We could do nothing but shout at the crocodiles. Horner confessed that he had gone to a distance for a short time, during which the brutes had landed and killed the two men. We returned very sad to the boat.
On its under side was a long silhouetted line of one and twenty little fish-eating bats, tiny spots of fur and skinny web, all so much alike that they might well have been one bat and twenty shadows. A small crocodile broke water into air which for him held no moisture, looked at the bats, then at us, and slipped back into the world of crocodiles.
The word crocodile means a creature which dislikes saffron; so it would be of no use, I suppose, for us to offer that lazy-looking animal floating in his tank, looking as lifeless as the trunk of a tree, with his nose and a little ridge of his mail-clad back alone appearing above the water, a saffron bun to say nothing of his being a creature whose appearance does not seem to invite us to come to close quarters, or to hold any communication with him.
A number of small rattans are tied to the bar about its middle, their other ends being made fast to a log. This arrangement is allowed to float down river; if it does not float freely, the crocodile will not take the bait. When a crocodile rises to the bait and swallows it, the bar gets fixed cross-wise in his gullet as he pulls on the rattans.
This scoundrel has had a pretty good dusting, and if once the Crocodile people land, there'll be an end of our expedition. As sure as eggs are eggs they will carry us off to Zanzibar or somewhere to give evidence before a slave court. Also nothing will be gained, for by the time the sailors get here, all these rascals will have bolted, except our friend, Hassan.
"Snug as a bug already. Everything's fine first-chop, except the station hands. Can't find where they're working, Barry, though the pay sheet shows fifty or more taking wages from Houten. But what's the trouble? You look as solemn as that crocodile you plunked on the beezer as he was investigating my free-lunch department." "Nothing's the matter," replied Barry shortly.
His food is mixed up with his clothes, and every member of him is unclean. The catcher of water-fowl, even though he dive in the Nile, may catch nothing. The trade of the fisherman is the worst of all. He is in blind terror of the crocodile, and falleth among crocodiles."
He walked on rapidly, but with a singular sort of stagger; so that he was sometimes on one and sometimes on the other side of the way, and formed a complete zigzag as he went. The wags said that he made this irregular step to get out of the way of the departed souls, who might follow him in a straight line, and that he imitated those who are afraid of a crocodile.
For about twenty minutes lie had fought against such a strain as I had never before used upon a fish; but I had now adopted hooks of such a large size and thickness that it was hardly possible for them to break, unless snapped by a crocodile. My reel was so loosened from the rod, that had the struggle lasted a few minutes longer I must have been vanquished.
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