356 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



tended to be, asleep. I wondered if he dreampt, and what 

 his dreams and reveries might be about ; possibly he was 

 dreaming of the same old world with which I associated him 

 possibly of the fish who were swimming in the waters below ; 

 or, he might be thinking of the men and women he had swal- 

 lowed in the course of his existence. There was a snort ; 

 perhaps that was occasioned by the bugles and heavy brass 

 ornaments which had adorned the limbs of some Hindoo 

 beauty he had eaten, and which were lying heavy and indi- 

 gestible on his stomach. But presently the brute lay so still, 

 and seemed so tranquil and placid in his sleep, that it was 

 difficult to imagine him guilty of such atrocities. He did not 

 appear to be disturbed by remorse, or the twitchings of a 

 guilty conscience ; it may have been all a slander. I felt so 

 kindly disposed towards him, that I could not imagine it 

 possible that if awake he would feel disposed to eat me. Let 

 us see ! so making a splash with my paddle, I wakened the 

 sleeping beauty. He instantly started up, and opened, what 

 appeared what indeed proved to be an enlarged man-trap ; 

 disclosing a red, slimy cavern within, fringed with great coni- 

 cal fangs. He closed it with a snap that made me shudder, 

 and then plunged into the water, his eyes glaring with hate 

 and defiance. 



Some days after I had made this new accquaintance, I was 

 sitting at home talking with my brother, when a native woman 

 came crying and screaming to the bungalow door, tearing her 

 hair out in handfulls ; she got down on the veranda floor and 

 struck her head against it, as if she really meant to dash her 

 brains out. A crowd of other women stood at a short distance, 

 crying and lamenting, as if they were frantic. What was the 

 matter ? Half a dozen voices made answer in a discordant 

 chorus, that while the poor woman was washing her clothes 

 by the river side, her child an infant about a year old had 

 been seized and swallowed by a mugger. Although convinced 

 that aid was now impossible, we took our guns and hastened 



