Crocodiles 
armpits, to reflect that at any moment one of the 
party may join “the great majority ” 
gruesome manner. 
I went down the Calabar River one day with 
the superintendent of marines, Captain Child, 
in an Accra canoe cut from a solid log, a very 
narrow craft, and long. Our crew consisted of 
eight small boys, with a still younger steersman. 
They knelt on the floor boards when paddling, 
and made the canoe fairly fly. Child and I were 
seated on cushions in the stern, our rifles beside 
us, for we were out to look for crocodiles that 
come to bask in the sun on the sand-banks. 
Child had located, when coming up-river in a 
launch one day, a huge brute on a sand-bank 
some five miles from Calabar, and it was this 
particular beast we were anxious to get. ; 
Arriving in the neighbourhood of the place, 
the boys paddled as softly as possible. There 
our quarry was, an old and very wary specimen 
of his tribe, and he slid off the bank before we 
were anything like near enough for a shot. 
Landing on the sand-spit to look at the trail 
made by this monster, we found the huge 
imprints of his fore and hind feet, and the deep 
furrow formed in the sand where he had ploughed 
his way to the water. From the marks left he 
must have measured quite eighteen feet long. 
We decided to lie in wait under cover of some 
mangrove bushes that grew on an island within 
45 
in such a 
