down down to the bottom of some deep still 

 pool, and hold you there till you drown. Utterly 

 helpless yourself to escape or fight, you cannot even 

 call, and if you could, no one could help you there. 

 It is all done in silence : a few bubbles come up where 

 a man went down ; and that is the end of it. 



We all knew about the crocodiles and were pre- 

 pared for them, but the sport was good, and when 

 you are fresh at the game and get interested in a hunt 

 it is not very easy to remember all the things you 

 have been warned about and the precautions you were 

 told to take. It was on the first day at the river that one 

 of our party, who was not a very old hand at hunting, 

 came in wet and muddy and told us how a crocodile 

 had scared the wits out of him. He had gone out 

 after guinea-fowl, he said, but as he had no dog to 

 send in and flush them, the birds simply played with 

 him : they would not rise but kept running in the 

 reeds a little way in front of him, just out of sight. 

 He could hear them quite distinctly, and thinking 

 to steal a march on them took off his boots and got 

 on to the rocks. Stepping bare-footed from rock to 

 rock where the reeds were thin, he made no noise 

 at all and got so close up that he could hear the little 

 whispered chink-chink-chink that they give when 

 near danger. The only chance of getting a shot 

 at them was to mount one of the big rocks from which 

 he could see down into the reeds ; and he worked his 

 way along a mud-bank towards one. A couple more 

 steps from the mud-bank on to a low black rock would 

 take him to the big one. Without taking his eyes off 

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