262 WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WAYS CHAP. 



had his arm bitten off at the elbow, being seized while collecting 

 aquatic vegetables from the bank. He waa saved from utter loss 

 by his comrades, who held him while his arm was in the jaws of 

 the crocodile. The man was brought to me in dreadful agony, 

 and the stump was immediately amputated above the fracture. 

 Another man was seized by the leg while assisting to push a vessel 

 off a sandbank ; he also was saved by a crowd of soldiers who were 

 with him, engaged in the same work : this man lost his leg. 



The captain of No. 10 tug was drowned in the dock vacated by 

 the 108 ton steamer, which had been floated into the river by a 

 small canal cut from the basin for that purpose. This channel waa 

 about 30 yards in length, and 3 feet in depth. No person ever 

 suspected that a crocodile would take possession of the dock, and it 

 was considered as the safest place for the troops to bathe. 



One evening at muster the captain was absent, and, as it was 

 known that a short time previously he had gone down to wash at 

 the basin, he was searched for at the place. A pile of clothes and 

 his red fez were upon the bank ; but no person was visible. A 

 number of men jumped into the water, and felt the bottom in every 

 portion of the dock, with the result that in a few minutes his body 

 was discovered ; one leg was broken in several places, being 

 severely mangled by the numerous teeth of a crocodile. There can 

 be little doubt that the creature, having drowned its victim, had 

 intended to return. 



This must have been a peculiarly wily monster to intrude into 

 a place which was so continually disturbed. We could never dis- 

 cover any crocodile in the immediate neighbourhood upon which we 

 could cast a suspicion as the depredator. Some months after this 

 incident, a terrible calamity in the canal was adjudged to have 

 been occasioned by the same crocodile, although no actual proof 

 could be adduced. 



About 7 P.M., Lady Baker and myself, together with Com- 

 mander Julian Baker, R.N., were sitting in an open shed in the 

 comparative cool of evening, when a man rushed past the sentries, 

 and threw himself upon the ground, clasping my legs in an agony 

 of terrified excitement. The sentries immediately rushed forward, 

 and seized him by the back of the neck. Releasing him instantly 

 by my order, the man gasped out, " Said, Said is gone ! taken 

 away from my side by a crocodile, now, this minute ! " " Said ! 

 what Said?" I asked: "there are many Saids."" Said of the 

 No. 10 steamer, the man you liked; he is gone; we were wading 

 together across the canal by the dock where Reis Mahomet was 

 killed ; the water is only waist deep, but a tremendous crocodile 



