"I am in no humor for jesting. Your syce is lost!"
"Drowned?"
"No; eaten!—by an enormous crocodile!"
He added that, on arriving at a small nulla about two miles off, he found it so much swollen by rain, that he had to swim his horse across it, holding one end of the cord which Sidhoo, in common with most Hindoos, wore coiled round his waist, and which was used in pulling water from the deep wells of the country. Hall got safely across, and then commenced pulling Sidhoo over by means of the cord. The black face, with the white teeth and turban, were bobbing above the muddy water, when all at once the groom threw up his arms, gave a loud shriek, and sank below the surface. Mr. Hall, who had doubled the cord round his hand, was dragged into the water; where he got a momentary glimpse of the long serrated tail of a Mugger, lashing the water a short way ahead of him. In his efforts to save himself, he lost his hold of the string, and with much difficulty clambered up the slippery bank of the nulla. All was now still. Only Sidhoo's turban was to be seen floating loosely, a considerable way down the stream. Hall ran toward it, with the sort of feeling which makes a drowning man catch at a straw; and, by means of a stick he succeeded in fishing it out, and brought it with him, as the only remnant of Sidhoo he could give an account of.
Bad news soon spreads in an Indian village, and Sidhoo's fate was soon made known to his wife; and in a short time she came crying and sobbing to the bungalow, and laid her youngest child at our friend's feet. The tears glistened in the poor fellow's eyes as he tried to soothe and console her; which he did by promising to provide for her and her children.
Although Hall was generally running over with fun, we smoked our cheroots that evening in silence; except when we proposed schemes for the annihilation of the crocodiles. A great many plans were discussed—but none that offered much chance of success. The next day, after breakfast, I was showing my visitor a galvanic blasting apparatus, lately received from England, for blowing up the snags (stumps of trees) which obstruct the navigation of the river. I was explaining its mode of action to him, when he suddenly interrupted me—"The very thing! Instead of snags, why not blow up the Muggers?"
I confessed that there could be no reason why we should not blast the Muggers. The difficulty was only how to manage it; yet the more we talked of it, the more feasible did the scheme appear.
The brutes keep pretty constant to the same quarters, when the fish are plentiful; and we soon ascertained that poor Sidhoo's murderer was well known in the neighborhood of the nulla. He had on several occasions carried off goats, sheep, pigs, and children; and had once attempted to drag a buffalo, whom he had caught drinking, into the water; but, from all accounts, came off second best in this rencontre. There not being enough of water in the nulla to drown the buffalo, the Mugger soon found he had caught a Tartar; and after being well mauled by the buffalo's horns, he was fain to scuttle off and hide himself among the mud.
I had observed, when blasting the snags, that the concussion produced by the discharge had the effect of killing all the fish within a range of some twenty or thirty yards. After every explosion, they were found in great numbers, floating on the surface of the water with their bellies uppermost. It now occurred to me, that if we could only get within a moderate distance of the Mugger, if we did not blow him to pieces, we would at all events give him a shock that would rather astonish him. An explosion of gunpowder under water communicates a much severer shock to the objects in its immediate vicinity, than the same quantity of powder exploded in the air; the greater density of the water enabling it, as it were, to give a harder blow.
Having made our arrangements, Mr. Hall, my brother, and myself, got into a small canoe, with the blasting apparatus on board, and dropt down the stream to where the nulla discharged its waters into the Rohan. He then got out and proceeded to a village close by, where we obtained for a few annas, the carcass of a young kid. A flask with about six pounds of gunpowder, and having the conducting wires attached, was then sewn into the kid's belly. Two Strong ropes were also tied to this bait; and, to one of these, the conducting wire was firmly bound with small cord. The ropes were about thirty yards long, and had each attached to its extremities one of the inflated goat-skins used by water-carriers. Hall, with his goat-skin under his arm, and a coil of loose rope in his hand, took one side of the nulla, while my brother, similarly provided took the other. My brother's rope contained the wire; so I walked beside him, while two coolies, with the battery ready charged, and slung to a pole which rested on their shoulders, accompanied me. A small float was also attached by a string to the kid, so as to indicate its position.