82 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



upper jaw and pulled it tight, some six inches 

 behind the point of its nostrils. Then, snatching 

 his opportunity, with a quick turn of his wrist he 

 slipped the slack of the cord round and under the 

 lower jaw. By pulling on the cord he could now 

 bring upper and lower jaw together and close the 

 animal's mouth. He then asked me to pull the 

 crocodile closer into the boat. I did so, and for a 

 part of a second the animal lay quiescent, with its 

 mouth bound by the single turn of the cord. Like 

 lightning, Manap in that time had twisted his 

 wrist, and a second circle of the cord lay round 

 the closed jaws. He drew the cord tight, and the 

 teeth of each jaw pressed home into the sockets 

 of the other. " Now pull his head over the gun- 

 wale of the canoe." As the long pointed head 

 appeared over the side of the canoe Manap firmly 

 seized it by the nostril. It seemed the maddest 

 thing possible. Here was a brute that a few 

 seconds before had been raging like a devil incar- 

 nate. We were still half blinded by the spray it 

 had flung in our faces, and the dug-out still rocked 

 in the waves its wild struggles had raised. For a 

 moment it was still, and a cord was round its 

 mouth; but the cord might so easily slip with any 

 sudden movement either of the crocodile or of our- 

 selves, and there was nothing to show that the 

 struggle was over far from it. One shuddered to 

 think of what would have happened had the cord 

 slipped. The hand that pressed so confidently on 

 the brute's nostrils would be snapped and seized in 

 a second, Manap would be taken overboard and 



