Part 13

"Six men, with a great struggling crocodile alive, on the verandah now, coming in, nothing can stop them. They want to see the Deputy Commissioner. I went for the Superintendent of Police, but he is out. They won't listen to me."

I went out to them and had the beast carried downstairs, and heard their story. There was no possible room to doubt their good faith. Their dream of a fortune, for such they expected, seemed like the Arabian Nights.

I told them I did not want a crocodile, but that as they had taken so much trouble I would pay them out of my own pocket, for killing it, the largest reward that Government used to pay. This was like offering a pound or two to men who looked for thousands. Of course they did not thank me. I left them to finish the matter themselves, and returned to business.

I was not to be quit of the crocodile so easily. For more than an hour a crowd continued to collect round the live monster as it lay on the grassy sands between the court-house and the sea. Then the bailiff returned to me more distracted than ever.

"The men have decided to unbind the crocodile and leave it where it is, and depart. They say they will not accept money as the price of blood. This is a tamed crocodile. It is like a friend. If it is dangerous now it is only because it is hungry. So long as it is well fed it will hurt nobody. They are not damned fishermen, nor damned hunters." (These adjectives were not used profanely, but correctly, as it is the popular belief that fishermen and hunters are damned.) "These men say that they are respectable Buddhists and cultivators. They would not kill a wild crocodile, much less a tame one."

"Put it in the sea."

"I told them to do so, but they said it wouldn't go."

"Bid them carry it to the creek a mile away."

The bailiff asked whether the reward was to be paid if it were let go in the creek, and thinking of possible damage subsequently I answered "No."

He returned to say, "The men declare that they have carried it far enough already. They've done enough for nothing."

"Then leave it bound."

"They want their ropes and pole."

"I'll take its blood upon my head. Call a man from the Treasury guard to shoot it. Let them fling its carcass into the sea and pay them then."

To this they agreed, it was reported; and, fearing some accident to the crowd, in the absence of the Superintendent of Police, I went to see the killing rightly done.

There was difficulty in getting people to move out of danger. So one of the men knelt beside the crocodile unbidden, and, with a knowing look, full of suppressed fun, he cut the strings that held the jaws together and some of the other ropes.

Slowly the crocodile moved and opened wide the greatest mouth I ever beheld--something suggestive of the "Jaws of Hell." The crowd shrieked and dispersed to a distance. Then the crocodile died. His bearers received the promised money, the fishes ate his body, and his blood is upon my head.

XIV

USEFUL SNAKES

In the backwoods of Thayetmyo district, Burma, in 1886, I was next to the man who was guiding a party of policemen and villagers going, in single file, on the track of robbers in arms, who had been cattle-lifting. Suddenly the guide in front held his hand behind his back as a signal to stop, and I passed on the signal.

The guide began to move forward, on his toes, as noiselessly as a cat, towards something on the ground. His eyes were riveted upon it, 20 or 30 feet in front of him. To the rest of the party it was invisible. The only noise was the flick of a hand on a pony's neck, removing a horsefly; and even that was stopped, and all was hushed. We seemed to hold our breath, and, though the guide was moving as quick as man could move without a noise, he seemed to be creeping slowly, slowly. He lifted up his arms as he came near his object, and then dived forward, so to speak, not losing his balance, but taking a great step and stooping, and recovering himself with equal speed. Then we saw his game. He had caught by the tail a long snake, 5 or 6 feet long, and was whirling it in the air.

It was thrilling to see it writhing in vain resistance to the laws of matter and the tendency called centrifugal. Its wriggling ended after two or three thwacks of its head upon the ground; but, long after it was as limp as a whipcord, he went on twirling it and thwacking it. He reminded me of the Scottish motto, "I mak' siccar," or "I make sure." The legend is that when Bruce had stabbed a traitor at Dumfries and said to a henchman, "I think I have killed him," the henchman answered, "Think? I mak' siccar," and went and finished the killing. Our guide was as resolute as he to make sure; but after a while he held the limp thing at arm's length, and let it dangle a second or two in front of him, undeniably dead. Then he flung it over his shoulder and walked on in silence.

"Any use?" I cried.

"Curry for us all," he answered, looking backwards over his shoulder and seeming surprised at the question.

In 1887, a few months later, being on the Pegu Yoma Mountains between Toungoo and Thayetmyo, still on the same kind of business, and leading a crowd of hungry men, I remembered this, and shot a python more than 7 yards long and as thick as a man's thigh. We met each other accidentally, he and I. He had been dozing after dinner, and yawned in the finest old Piccadilly style. I sent an unmannerly bullet into his mouth, which killed him. For two days, at least, his flesh supplied the wherewithal to flavour the rice of more than forty men; but I cannot tell the taste of it. I have eaten silkworms curried. They tasted like shrimps. But if the reader wishes to realise the savour of snakes, let him eat them himself.

THE TUCKTOO

Burma is chiefly remarkable for a lizard that occasionally haunts the trees and houses there. Span-long or more, it has a head big out of all proportion compared with others of the lizard clans, and eyes that sometimes seem to follow you like owl's eyes, and a loud voice. "Tuck-too!" it cries, "Tuck-too! Tuck-too!" without any variation, except an occasional repetition of the "oo-oo-oo" at the end, like a musician tuning his pipes.

It is considered very lucky to have such a lizard in your house; and as it is said to be fond of baby rats, and rats bring plague, the prejudice may have some foundation in fact. Its principal food is insects--a wholesome appetite too; but its great glory comes from the similarity of its cry, weak in consonants and loud in vowels, to the Burmese for Quite so. It is a great prophet. They say the rains can be foretold by counting its Quite sos; and if you are about to wed you should ask it, "Is she good? Is she bad?" "Quite so, quite so," says the prophet, impartial as Fate. But perverse, let it stop first; and if your last question to get "Quite so" is the question,--"Is she bad?" you should break off the marriage. They say that marriages have been broken off on this account; and assuredly, in many a village, you can see and hear the children with mock gravity keeping time to the tucktoo and crying in chorus,--"Is she good? Is she bad?"

Sometimes, like other prophets, it comes to church to speak, never to listen; and then it may be loudly heard, to the joy of the congregations rather than of the clergy. The rest of its history has been embalmed in a song by one of its friends:--