“That’s right,” whispered Frank excitedly, as a suppressed murmur rose from the Malays; “give him plenty of line. He won’t go very far. There’s lots of length;” and he stood looking on as, excited as he, Ned dragged at the rope, and passed it rapidly through his hands as it kept on running toward the bank, and into the river more and more and more, till only about ten yards were left before the end was reached—the end tied to a young cocoa-nut tree.
One of the Malays sprang up, whipped out his kris, and was going to cut the rope, for a check might have made the crocodile leave the bait before he had swallowed it, and the intention was to run with the end over to the river’s brim, thus giving another fifty feet of line to run; but, just as he raised his kris, the great reptile ceased drawing out the rope, and Frank gave his young companion a congratulatory slap on the shoulder.
“Hurrah!” he cried; “he will not go any farther. He has got a lurking-place down there, under those lilies, and he is busy swallowing it.”
He turned and asked one of the men a question, and the answer confirmed his opinion.
“Yes; it’s all right,” said Frank.
“Shall I strike now?”
“Oh no; give him plenty of time to swallow his chicken curry. I say, wait a bit; won’t he find it warm in a few minutes.”
“But I must strike soon. Let me do it.”
“Oh yes; you shall strike, and then we’ll have a lot of the fellows ready to catch hold, for that fellow’s seventeen or eighteen feet long. I know, and you don’t know, how strong these things are.”
Ned made no reply, for he was suffering from a strange feeling of emotion: his heart beat violently, there was a sensation of suffocation in his breast, and the hands which held the rope trembled and twitched.