CROCODILE SHOOTING. 289 



" If one of them happens to come too close to the 

 hidden watcher there is an upheaval of the mud, 

 and, bap ! the monkey is in the crocodile's jaws ; and 

 for all its screams and all its companions' cries it 

 is carried off towards the water, to be devoured at 

 leisure. Sometimes it is not a monkey but a man 

 that is taken." 



This is unfortunately only too true, and I well 

 remember hearing at an official inquiry a Malay's 

 horribly vivid description of his companion's death 

 in this manner. They had been cutting nipah palm- 

 leaves together, and were loading their canoe with 

 the fronds that they had collected, when a crocodile 

 made a dash out of a wallow at one of the men and 

 seized him above the knee. Neither man had a knife 

 in his hand, and all that Awang, the wretched man 

 who had been seized, could do was to throw both his 

 arms round a tree and attempt to hold on. The other 

 man, Saleh, ran to fetch his knife, which he had left 

 in his boat, but even as he turned to run Awang 

 had been torn from the tree and carried towards the 

 water. Twice again did Awang momentarily check 

 the brute's course by seizing and holding on to a 

 tree or branch, but each time the weight and strength 

 of the crocodile wrenched him from his support, and 

 before Saleh returned with his knife Awang had been 

 torn from the last tree on the river-bank, and was 

 carried screaming to his death. 



" But it is not every one," said Manap continuing 

 his story, " who is aware that both crocodiles and 

 tigers are forbidden to kill mankind, and that every 

 time one of them kills a man it breaks one of the 



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