“Not it, sir. You don’t believe it, I see, but it’s all natur’. It’s a-using up of the good food as the croc don’t want, and which would all be wasted, for he ain’t a clean-feeding sort of beast. He takes his food in chops and chunks, and swallows it indecent-like all in lumps. A croc ain’t like a cow as sits down with her eyes half shut and chews and chews away, sentimental-like, turning herself into a dairy and making a good supply of beautiful milk such as we poor sailors never hardly gets a taste on in our tea. A croc is as bad as a shark, a nasty sort of feeder, and if I was you young gents I’d have a study when I got ashore again, and look in some of your big books, and you’d find what I says is all there.”
“Did you find what you’ve been telling us all there?” said Poole.
“Nay, my lad; I heard best part of it from my officer that I used to go with. Restless sort of chap he was—plenty of money, and he liked spending it in what he called exhibitions—No, that aren’t right—expeditions—that’s it; and he used to take me. What he wanted to find was what he called the Nile Sauce; but he never found it, and we never wanted it. My word, the annymiles as he used to shoot when we was hungry, and that was always. My word, the fires I used to make, and the way I used to cook! Why, I could have given the Camel fifty out of a hundred and beat him. We didn’t want any sauce. Did either of you gents ever taste heland steak? No, I suppose not. Fresh cut, frizzled brown, sprinkled with salt, made hotter with a dash of pepper, and then talk about juice and gravy! Lovely! Wish we’d got some now. Why, in some of our journeys up there in what you may call the land of nowhere and nobody, we was weeks sometimes without seeing a soul, only annymiles—ah, and miles and miles of them. I never see such droves and never shall again. They tell me that no end of them has got shot.—Beautiful creatures they were too! Such coats; and such long thin legs and arms, and the way they’d go over the sandy ground was wonderful. They never seemed to get tired. I’ve seen a drove of them go along like a hurricane, and when they have pulled up short to stare at us, and you’d think that they hadn’t got a bit of breath left in their bodies, they set-to larking, hip, snip, jumping over one another’s backs like a lot of school-boys at leap-frog, only ten times as high.”
“Did you ever see any lions?” said Fitz, growing more serious as he began to realise that there was very little fiction and a great deal of fact in the sailor’s yarn.
“Lots, sir. There have been times when you could hear them roaring all round our camp. Here, I want to speak the truth. My governor used to call it camp, but it was only a wagging, and we used to sleep on the sand among the wheels. Why, I’ve lain there with my hand making my gun rusty, it got so hot and wet with listening to them pretty pussy-cats come creeping round us, and one of them every now and then putting up his head and roaring till you could almost feel the ground shake. Ah, you may chuckle, Mr Poole, but that’s a fact too; I’ve felt it, and I know. And do you know why they roared?”
“Because they were hungry?”
“Partly, sir; but most of it’s artfulness. It’s because they know that it will make the bullocks break away—stampede, as they calls it—and rush off from where there’s people to take care of them with rifles, and then they can pick off just what they like. But they don’t care much about big bullock. They’ve got tasty ideas of their own, same as crocs have. What they likes is horse, and the horses knows it too, poor beggars! It’s been hard work to hold them sometimes—my governor’s horse, you know, as he hunted on; and I’ve heard them sigh and groan as if with satisfaction when the governor’s fired with his big double breech-loader and sent the lions off with their tails trailing behind and leaving a channel among their footprints in the sand. I’ve seen it, Mr Burnett, next morning, and I know.”
“All right, Chips,” cried Poole. “We won’t laugh at you and your yarns. But now look here; there must be no more chaff. This is serious work.”
“All right, sir,” said the man good-humouredly, as he wiped his dripping face. “No one can’t say as I aren’t working—not even old Butters.”
“No, no,” said Poole hastily. “You are working well.”