78 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



slender fibre bands round the bait and to set the 

 hook free to catch in the crocodile's gullet. 



Then I held on and drove the hook well home. 

 The curious electric sensation that thrills a line 

 when a fish is on it told that the crocodile was 

 well hooked. At once it moved off into the deep 

 water at the centre of the pool, dragging the canoe 

 after it. The sensation of blind terror that the brute 

 felt at the pain of the hook, and of the force that 

 bound it to it knew not what, was plainly trans- 

 mitted along the tautened line. For some few yards 

 it sullenly resisted, as I slowly hauled in the line 

 hand by hand. It was numb and sick with fright; 

 but only for a few yards, and then it burst into a 

 wild fury. For years it had been the tyrant of the 

 lake, and, since it had left its native river, had never 

 come into contact with anything stronger and more 

 powerful than itself, and it would not yield the 

 supremacy, much less its life, without a struggle. 

 Wildly lashing the water, it turned to dive to the 

 bottom and to break the rattan-line. I was brought 

 almost to my knees, and had to pay out the line 

 I had pulled in; and it was all that I could do to 

 hold on to the end of the line while the crocodile 

 towed us, canoe and all, towards the second pool. 

 Again I hauled in the line with all my might, and 

 Manap skilfully kept the canoe head on to the 

 crocodile. In the contest I had the great factor in 

 my favour that I had not so much to pull the 

 crocodile up to the canoe as to pull the canoe up 

 to the crocodile; but, on the other hand, my foot- 

 hold in the unstable cockleshell of a canoe was not 



