Part 12

XIII

A NEST OF CROCODILES

In 1893 and 1894 I was Deputy Commissioner of Kyaukpyu district, which means the islands of Ramri and Cheduba, and smaller isles adjoining, and an adjacent strip of the malarious coast of Arakan. The headquarters was in the north of Ramri, and, sitting in my house there, one evening early in 1894, I heard an unusual clamour at the door. There was audibly somebody having an altercation with my servants.

I went to see and hear. It was a fisherman from a far-off corner of the district. Till shortly before then the Government had paid rewards for the destruction of crocodiles and their eggs; and so this man, on finding a nest of crocodile's eggs, put them in a bushel basket and started with it for headquarters. He was nearly there before he heard that these eggs were no more paid for. Loath to lose his labour, he finished his journey and tried to sell them in the bazaar. There was a sensation. He had to run.

The people cried to him that he must not sleep in the town till he got rid of them. "Fling them into the sea," they said; but he was most unwilling. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." Perhaps it was a lie that rewards were no longer paid? One never can tell what to believe. He decided to try to speak to the Deputy Commissioner before flinging the eggs away.

I heard his story, and told him it was true that rewards were paid no more; but I pitied the man and bought the nest from him, basket and all, paying him liberally. It is needful to mention the liberality of the payment to explain what followed.

"Take it upstairs."

The servants were men, of course, not women; yet they shuddered and drew back, each pushing another forward.

"I'll carry it for you!" cried the happy fisherman; "is it into the bedroom you want me to take it?"

"Put it on the front verandah."

The servants surveyed it from a distance. The eggs were in colour like hen's eggs, and about twice the size. They were longer, but hardly at all thicker, and peculiar only in being of the same size at both ends. Some scores of them were embedded in mud, with roots of reeds and grass; but there is no reason to suppose, as has been done, that the crocodile which laid the eggs had mixed the grasses with the mud. How could she, stiff-necked as she is, and unhandy? The mud so mixed would be the readiest available where the eggs were laid, between wind and water in a shallow tidal creek. That was where the fisherman said that he found them. The heat of the sun is what hatches them. Part of the day they lie bare to it or almost bare, and for the rest of the time they are covered by water which the sun has warmed. In such an incubator the heat of the rotting grass would matter no more than a lucifer match in a furnace. Of course, all life does hang upon the sun, but the unhatched crocodiles depend on it directly, and might make out a better title to celestial parentage than anyone I know, not even excepting the Emperor of Japan.

The servants remained alarmed. It was probably at their instigation that a carpenter came to see if he was not wanted to make a wooden wall to screen the verandah where the eggs were from the rest of the house. When bidden make anything he liked, if willing to be paid for it by two or three young crocodiles, he hastily retreated. The beasts have a bad name in Arakan. There, as in Egypt, they do eat people occasionally, but there is nothing else against them.

Another device of the servants was to keep the dogs beside the nest and feed them there. "To give us warning when the crocodiles come out," they said, "so that we may let you know." There was no doubt that the little dears were on their way--too far on their way to let me blow any of the eggs successfully. I did blow one or two, but the holes made by the departing contents were too big. The shells were not worth keeping.

The dogs were not needed after all. A number of visitors were sitting and standing around the nest on the morning when the great moment came, and the eggs atop began to open like popcorns. From every opening shell there leapt a baby crocodile, span-long but perfect, as nimble as a rat and desperately hungry. No wonder! Think of the food they needed to swell them to the size of their mighty parent.

It was difficult to study them. Whatever noise they made was drowned in the clamour of the visitors and servants; and they themselves, to the number of about half a dozen, were soon drowned in whisky, as the best substitute for the spirits of wine which had not arrived. Their little corpses may still be seen in Glasgow Museum, I suppose. At least, I sent them to it for a sepulchre. The rest, and all their unhatched brethren, found a more common grave in a hole that was ready for them in the garden.

I was very sorry to have to do this; but I had to be at office at 10 a.m., and if this had not been done before I went, I would have found my house desolate on my return, and no dinner ready. My servants would have fled unanimously. So the poor little crocodiles had to die. But it was humanely done, and the unhatched eggs were broken before being buried, and the earth rammed tight.

"Stand and see the man does it," I said to the "boy" or factotum.

"You may be sure it'll be done," said he, and added, with unusual cheerfulness, "we'll all be helping him."

Though the lucky fisherman had been told to say as little as possible, he had boasted so much of his good fortune that a plain-spoken vernacular proclamation had to be sent in all directions to this effect--

NOTICE NESTS OF CROCODILES' EGGS The Deputy Commissioner Does not Want any More

There was a curious sequel a month or two later. Somewhere about the south of Ramri Island, there lived a secluded farmer of strong intellect, who asked himself, "Why did the Deputy Commissioner want to hatch crocodiles' eggs?" His neighbours were asking themselves the same question, and to an interested gathering at a Buddhist temple he explained his solution of the conundrum.

"Why do we hatch the eggs of fowls? Because we want fowls. Therefore it must have been because he wanted crocodiles that the Deputy Commissioner bought and hatched the crocodile's eggs.

"He probably did not know, as we do, that the new-born crocodiles are untameable, like fishes. They need a great deal of time to grow big. But a full-grown crocodile is a very sagacious as well as a very hungry animal, and it would quickly become devoted to anybody who fed it as well as he could afford to feed it. So, if he paid so much for the eggs, he would give thousands of rupees for a really big and mature crocodile, especially if it were nicely tamed."

The wisdom of this reasoning was much admired. So the wise fellow and his friends sought the acquaintance of the dwellers in the creeks, and decoyed into a little tank a patriarchal crocodile. Some weeks were spent in "taming" it (and dosing it with opium, as was afterwards suspected). Then half a dozen men, no longer young, shouldered the pole to which the crocodile was tied, and carried it, more than a day's journey, to the district headquarters.

They came to the house of the Deputy Commissioner about the middle of the second day after leaving home, and were told he was at office. They went to seek him.

He was on the bench, in court. Shrieks and shouts and a wild stampede of people was the informal announcement of the new arrival. They stopped all business; but nothing stopped them. Not knowing the way very well, they began by entering the Treasury. The sentry shouted and the guard turned out with fixed bayonets and loaded rifles, in case this might be a manœuvre for more easily rushing the Treasury.

"We are fetching a live crocodile to the Deputy Commissioner," cried the newcomers to all who would listen to them. Then it was supposed they might have been sent for, and they were directed to the court-rooms.

The bailiff rushed into court, and, looking distracted, trembling and hardly able to articulate, he said,--