From time to time there would be a faint plash rise from the river, and the water rippled in the moonbeams, sounds then well understood by the occupants of Mr Perowne’s dining-room, for as the languid lieutenant made another allusion to the pleasure of being a frog, the doctor said, laughing: “Try it Chumbley; you are young and tolerably plump, and it would make a vacancy for another sub. The crocodiles would bless you.”
“Two natives were carried off last week while bathing on the bank,” said a sharp, harsh voice, and a little, thin, dry man who had been lying back in an easy-chair with a handkerchief over his head raised himself and passed his glass to be filled with claret and iced water. “Hah! Harley,” he continued, with a broad Scotch accent, “you ought to put down crocodiles. What’s the use of our having a Resident if he is not to suppress every nuisance in the place?”
“Put down crocodiles, Mr Stuart, eh? Rather a task!”
“Make these idle young officers shoot them then, instead of dangling after our daughters. Set Chumbley to work.”
“The crocodiles never hurt me,” drawled the young man. “Rather ugly, certainly, but they’ve a nice open style of countenance. I like hunting and shooting, but I don’t see any fun in making yourself a nuisance to everything that runs or flies, as the doctor there does, shooting, and skinning and sticking pins through ’em, and putting them in glass cases with camphor. I hope you don’t do much of that sort of thing, Mr Rosebury?”
“I? Oh, no,” said the Reverend Arthur, raising his eyes from a dreamy contemplation of the doorway, through which a pleasant murmur of female voices came. “I—I am afraid I am guilty as to insects.”
“But you draw the line at crocodiles, I suppose? Poor brutes! They never had any education, and if you put temptation in their way, of course they’ll tumble in.”
“And then repent and shed crocodile’s tears,” said Captain Hilton, smiling.
“A vulgar error, sir!” said the doctor, sharply. “Crocodiles have no tear-secreting glands.”
“They could not wipe their eyes in the water if they had, doctor,” said Captain Hilton, merrily.