OLD G. AND THE CROCODILE.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2210, 29 August 1910, Page 7

OLD G. AND THE CROCODILE.

A FIGHT FOR LIFE. My work at Singapore took me on a visit up a river to one of those timber-cutting camps where are felled and rafted the great hardwood logs so valued in the Chinese market. G., the white man in charge, was a characteristic old "hard case," who had started life before the mast in a sailing ship, and drifted in a beachcombing fashion to our colony, where he had been given, almost in charity a subordinate billet in one of the large timber companies.

Arriving in my boat at the little jetty or landing-stage, I was astonished to find G. lying on a rattan couch within a few yards of the bank with a heavy express rifle across his knees, gazing intently at a rough pagar or fence erected in the stream. Hanging from this fence, and a few feet above the water, were the corpses of a monkey and several pariah dogs ; while half a dozen ducks, each tied to the fence by the leg with a long string, flapped about on the water and quacked dismally in their efforts to escape.

I was just wondering whether the whisky-bottle or too much solitude accounted for this state of affairs, when I noticed that G's leg was swathed in bandages from knee to ankle. Throwing myself down near him in the welcome shade, I learned the following story :

Two nights before, G. was sleeping peacefully in his little palm-leaf house, in a clearing about twenty yards from the river-bank, when his dog began to growl and refused to be silenced. G. turned out and walked round the hut to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, but, seeing nothing, addressed himself to the dog in his usual lurid and picturesque sailing-ship language and retired to bed again. Five minutes later he was once more aroused by a yelp from the dog ; and, this time really annoyed, he seized a stick and sallied forth to inflict dire punishment on the disturber of his dreams. Suddenly a dark form glided swiftly from the shadows, and G. felt himself seized by the right knee as in a vice. Stooping to free himself, he found he was in the grip of a large crocodile, whose teeth were firmly embedded in flesh and bone. Backwards and forwards the struggle swayed—the crocodile striving to pull its destined victim to the water's edge, and G., hampered as fie was by his imprisoned leg, fighting for his life to reach higher ground. At last the beast, hurling its victim to the ground with a shake of its powerful head, began to drag him swiftly towards the water.

Poor G., feeling as he expressed it, that it was "all over bar the shoutin'." determined to make one last effort for his life ; and, taking advantage of a momentary halt as the brute was steering past a tree-stump he sat up and succeeded in getting both his thumbs into the reptile's eye-sockets—the only vulnerable part of a crocodile's head. The rest of the story is perhaps best told in G.'s own words, or as nearly as circumstances will permit :

"So soon as I gets my thumbs made fast in 'is eyes, 'e opens 'is mouth to shout, an' lets go my leg. Then, first thing next mornin', the coolies lays 'is breakfast for *im, as you see, an' I gets into this chair, an' I stays, if it's a month." Vainly I tried to persuade G. to come away with me to the next station and see a doctor. I argued with him, I implored him, but it was absolutely useless. He refused to move from that chair till he had bagged his crocodile ; and I was at last obliged to leave him,, having dressed his leg and exhausted every known means of persuasion short of brute force.

I met him a week later lying in a hospital bed, suffering aeverelyi, but quite happy in the knowledge that the bones of tbat croc, were bleaching in the sun outside his house. Poor old G. ! Only a few weeks afterwards the habit of clearing creepers from his path in the jungle with the butt-end of his loaded and cocked rifle proved fatal to him. —A. Cavendish, in "Chambers's Journal.'