Seeing it was useless to attend the shark-hook any longer, we left it for the night and returned to our hammocks.
Ere I fell asleep a reflection or two broke in upon me. I considered that as far as the judgment of civilised man went, everything had been procured and done to ensure success. We had hooks and lines and baits and patience; we had spent nights in watching, had seen the cayman come and take the bait, and after our expectations had been wound up to the highest pitch all ended in disappointment. Probably this poor wild man of the woods would succeed by means of a very simple process, and thus prove to his more civilised brother that, notwithstanding books and schools, there is a vast deal of knowledge to be picked up at every step, whichever way we turn ourselves.
In the morning, as usual, we found the bait gone from the shark-hook. The Indians went into the forest to hunt, and we took the canoe to shoot fish and get another supply of turtle's eggs, which we found in great abundance on this large sandbank.
We went to the little shallow creek, and shot some young caymen about two feet long. It was astonishing to see what spite and rage these little things showed when the arrow struck them; they turned round and bit it: and snapped at us when we went into the water to take them up. Daddy Quashi boiled one of them for his dinner, and found it very sweet and tender. I do not see why it should not be as good as frog or veal.
The day was now declining apace, and the Indian had made his instrument to take the cayman. It was very simple. There were four pieces of tough, hardwood a foot long, and about as thick as your little finger, and barbed at both ends; they were tied round the end of the rope in such a manner that if you conceive the rope to be an arrow, these four sticks would form the arrow's head; so that one end of the four united sticks answered to the point of the arrowhead, while the other end of the sticks expanded at equal distances round the rope, thus:
Now it is evident that, if the cayman swallowed this (the other end of the rope, which was thirty yards long, being fastened to a tree), the more he pulled the faster the barbs would stick into his stomach. This wooden hook, if you may so call it, was well-baited with the flesh of the acouri, and the entrails were twisted round the rope for about a foot above it.
Nearly a mile from where we had our hammocks the sandbank was steep and abrupt, and the river very still and deep; there the Indian pricked a stick into the sand. It was two feet long, and on its extremity was fixed the machine: it hung suspended about a foot from the water, and the end of the rope was made fast to a stake driven well into the sand.
The Indian then took the empty shell of a land-tortoise and gave it some heavy blows with an axe. I asked why he did that. He said it was to let the cayman hear that something was going on. In fact, the Indian meant it as the cayman's dinner-bell.
