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 [99] ]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 [100] ]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 [101] ]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.