CROCODILE SHOOTING. 295 



say, furthermore, that when the eggs are hatched out 

 all the little animals that run towards the water 

 become buaia, the crocodile, whilst those that run 

 towards the land become biaua, the iguana. But I 

 do not believe that : it is a story we tell our children 

 just as our fathers told it to us." 



" Ha ! listen to that." 



A magnificent sea-eagle, white and grey, and re- 

 splendent in the sun, sitting on the topmost branch 

 of a dead tree, where all might see him, had uttered 

 two clear high notes. His ordinary call is like the 

 mewing of a cat, but these two notes, " Hoo " " Hoo," 

 rang out like a bugle-call. 



"That means that at the river -mouth the tide 

 has turned, and that now it is lunga pasang 'the 

 flower of the rising tide.' The sea-eagle is the king 

 of all the birds in the forest, and he tells them all 

 of the turn of the tide. With the rising tide the 

 fish will come in from the sea, and the crocodiles 

 will soon wake up and return to the water to seek 

 their food. But there on the bank is one still 

 asleep." 



It was an animal some eight feet long, and it lay 

 sound asleep with that ludicrously amiable smile at 

 the corners of its mouth that is far more charac- 

 teristic of a crocodile than are any tears. It is 

 impossible to imagine tears in such an eye : a lifeless 

 snaky yellow, with a narrow black slit down its 

 centre, and devoid of every feeling but that of a 

 bitter frozen hatred of every living creature. When 

 the eyes are closed one can see in the animal's smile 



