THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS 



rent. Occasionally however we wanted a piece of 

 hide, and then tried to retrieve them. One such 

 occasion showed very vividly the tenacity of life 

 and the primitive nervous systems of these great 

 saurians. 



I discovered the beast, head out of water, in a 

 reasonable sized pool below which were shallow 

 rapids. My Springfield bullet hit him fair, where- 

 upon he stood square on his head and waved his tail 

 in the air, rolled over three or four times, thrashed 

 the water, and disappeared. After waiting a while 

 we moved on downstream. Returning four hours 

 later I sneaked up quietly. There the crocodile lay, 

 sunning himself on the sand bank. I supposed he 

 must be dead; but when I accidentally broke a twig, 

 he immediately commenced to slide off into the water. 

 Thereupon I stopped him with a bullet in the spine. 

 The first shot had smashed a hole in his head^ just 

 behind the eye^ about the size of an ordinary coffee 

 cup. In spite of this wound, which would have been 

 instantly fatal to any warm-blooded animal, the 

 creature was so little affected that it actually re- 

 acted to a slight noise made at some distance from 

 where it lay. Of course the wound would probably 

 have been fatal in the long run. 



The best spot to shoot at, indeed, is not the head, 

 but the spine immediately back of the head. 



280 



