The naturalist, to do him justice, did not lose the opportunity of studying the habits and manners of the Egyptian crocodile, but having reviewed the animal in a scientific spirit, he again trembled for his life, for it was now evident that the blockade was to be kept up in earnest.
Hours of suspense and of imprisonment consist of 240 minutes each, but they come to an end at last. Time sometimes goes on crutches, but it proceeds nevertheless. The sun went down as on the previous evening, and after a very short period of dusk the last rays of departing daylight exhibited the crocodile lying at the foot of the palm-tree, placid and horizontal.
The Professor now searched in the storehouse of his memory for some instance of a man who had passed the night on the top of a palm-tree. After going through the whole of ancient and modern history, he commenced the department of travels, and suddenly bethought him of Robinson Crusoe, which, though not usually accepted as a book of travels, is far more truthful than the great majority of works of that class. Now, Robinson Crusoe passed the first night after his shipwreck in a tree, and this tree was in all probability a palm-tree. “Why, then,” said Herr Dummkopf, “should I not do the same?”
And still fortifying himself with the example of Robinson Crusoe, the Professor drew some of the smaller branches around him, and composed himself to sleep.
But the night was long, and Dummkopf slept but little. He dreamed that he was at Weisstadt, delivering a lecture which proved that the crocodile was a fabulous animal like the Sphinx, when suddenly a shower of crocodile’s tears fell on his face. He awoke with a start, and was very near falling down on to the tail of his besieger.
The crocodile was now, in all probability, fast asleep, and Dummkopf resolved to play him a trick. “If,” said the Professor, “I could slip down the tree, and swim across the Nile without its hearing me, it would be nicely caught when it awoke in the morning and found me gone.” But having reflected that he might be caught himself, he abandoned this desperate project, and merely resolved not to go to sleep again that night.
When day broke the Professor saw that the crocodile had not been idle during the night. Instead of sleeping he had been fishing on the banks of the Nile, and the bones with which the ground was strewed showed that he had not fished in vain. The monster had now had his first course, and he looked upwards towards his intended victim as if to say that he was quite ready for the second.
The Professor had certainly a terrible future before him. The contest between the besieger and the besieged was by no means equal, for the former could find as much food as he required in the waters of the adjacent Nile, while the latter saw no prospect of obtaining the slightest nourishment, and would in all probability either die from starvation or fall fainting into the jaws of his voracious assailant.
In the meanwhile Dummkopf’s stomach, a machine which in some respects is quite independent of the brain, began to murmur loudly, for it had been deprived of two meals—the supper of the previous evening and the morning’s breakfast.
Among a great many other things of which the learned Professor was ignorant, he did not know that palm-trees produced dates, a rich pulpy fruit on which the Arabs have contrived to live very well since the time of Adam, the first colonist of Arabia. However, a short time after sunrise a ray chanced to fall upon a large bunch of these valuable articles of food, which the Professor at once recognised from having seen them in the grocers’ shops of his fatherland. In Germany he had been in the habit of breakfasting on beef and sausages, supported by several slices of bread, and washed down by several glasses of wine. But in the desert he was obliged to content himself with whatever manna he could get, and to be thankful, moreover, that Providence had sent him any. He ate dates by the handful, and felt much strengthened by his repast.