CROCODILE SHOOTING. 293 



stream, and though it was to all intents dead it 

 continued blindly to struggle towards the water. It 

 made no effort to bite or to use its powerful tail, its 

 one idea being to reach its natural element. " Take 

 the paddle and strike it on the body. Don't fire." I 

 dropped the rifle and hit the brute over the body and 

 head until the struggles ceased, and, save for muscular 

 contractions that rippled over its skin, it lay still. 



It was a small brute, between six and seven feet 

 long, and leaving it for the launch to pick up we 

 paddled on. The next crocodile we saw was a little 

 creature, not more than two feet long, that was learn- 

 ing to bask like its elders. Both my bullets flew over 

 its back, and it escaped in safety. 



" Do you see the patch of lalang grass by the point 

 in front of us ? Last year I found a crocodile's nest 

 there : three-and-sixty eggs there were in it, and the 

 clerk at the police station gave me ten cents apiece 

 for them. Six dollars and thirty cents I got, but one 

 does not find a nest every day. You do not know 

 how a crocodile makes its nest ? The mother selects 

 a spot, open to the sun, on some dry sandy soil; 

 often, as in the case of yonder nest, it is in a patch 

 of lalang grass, often in the piai fern. She collects 

 grass and dry fern in her mouth, and heaps them 

 up until she has formed a pile as broad as three 

 men can stretch from finger-tip to finger-tip, and in 

 height midway between a man's knee and his hip. 

 In this nest she lays fifty or sixty eggs, and covers 

 them over with dry grass. She then makes two 

 wallows by the nest, one on the side by the rising 

 sun, the other towards the setting sun, and prepares 



