“To yawn, I suppose,” said Fitz. “Haul away there, my lad! Look alive!” came in a deep growl from below; and Chips winked and made the great muscles stand out in his brown arms as he hauled, but kept on talking all the same.
“Yawn, sir! Nay, that isn’t it. It’s a curiosity in nat’ral history, and this ’ere’s fact. You young gents may believe it or not, just as you like.”
“Thank you,” said Fitz dryly; “I’ll take my choice.”
“Ah, I expect you won’t believe it, sir. But this ’ere’s what it’s for. He leaves his front-door wide open like that, and there’s a little bird with a long beak as has been waiting comes along, hippity-hop, and settles on the top of Mr Croc’s head, and looks at first one eye and then at the other to see if he’s really asleep, and that there is no gammon. He aren’t a-going to run no risks, knowing as he does that a croc’s about one of the artfullest beggars as ever lived. I suppose that’s why they calls ’em amphibious. Oh, they’re rum ’uns, they are! They can sham being dead, and make theirselves look like logs of wood with the rough bark on, and play at being in great trouble and cry, so as to get people to come nigh them to help, and then snip, snap, they has ’em by the leg, takes them under water to drown, and then goes and puts ’em away in the cupboard under the bank.”
“What for?” said Poole.
“What for, sir? Why, to keep till they gets tender. Them there Errubs of the desert gets so sun-tanned that they are as tough as string; so hard, you know, that they wouldn’t even agree with a croc. Yo-hoy! Haul oh, and here she comes!” added the man, in a low musical bass voice to himself, as he kept on dragging at the soft Manilla rope.
“I say, Burnett,” said Poole seriously, “don’t you think we’d better get pencil and paper and put all this down—Natural History Notes by Peter Winks, Head Carpenter of the Schooner Teal?”
“Nay, nay, sir, don’t you do that. Stick to fact. That’s what I don’t like in people as writes books about travel. They do paint it up so, and lay it on so thick that the stuff cracks, comes off, and don’t look nat’ral.”
“Then you wouldn’t put down about that little bird that comes hippity-hop and looks at the crocodile’s eyes?”
“What, sir! Why, that’s the best part of it. That’s the crumb of the whole business.”