Ayer yang mĕmbunoh angkau.”
Which, being translated, means—
“It was not I who killed you,
It was water which killed you.”[290]
After thrice repeating this strange performance, the crocodile again dives and proceeds to prepare the corpse for its prospective banquet. Embracing the corpse with its “arms,” and curving the tip of its powerful tail under its own belly (until the tail is nearly bent double), it contrives to break the backbone of the victim, and then picking up the body once more with its teeth, dashes it violently against a trunk or root in order to break the long bones of the limbs. When the bones are thus so broken as to offer no obstruction, it swallows the body whole—thus affording a remarkable parallel to the boa in its method of devouring its prey, and recalling Darwinian ideas of their cousin-hood. Miraculous escapes have, however, occasionally occurred. Thus Lebai ʿAli was caught by a crocodile at Batu Burok (Kuala Selangor), one evening as the tide was ebbing, and the crocodile, after smothering him effectually (as it thought) in the thick mud, retired to await the end. Insensibly, however, it floated farther and farther off with the falling tide, and Lebai ʿAli, seeing his opportunity, made a bold and successful dash for freedom.
A similar case was that of Si Ka’, who was pushed under a bamboo root on the river bank by the crocodile which caught him, and who, after waiting till his formidable enemy had floated a little farther off than usual, drew himself up by an overhanging stem and swarmed up it. At the same moment the crocodile made a rush, and actually caught him by the great toe, which latter, however, he willingly surrendered to his enemy as the price of his liberty.
A yet more marvellous escape, was that of the youth belonging to the Government launch at Klang, who escaped, it is related, by the time-honoured expedient of putting his thumbs into the crocodile’s eyes. In connection with this latter exploit, by the way, Malay authorities assert that the crocodile’s eyes protrude from their sockets on stalks (like those of a crab) so long as he stays under water, the stalks being “as long as the forefinger,” so that it is quite an easy matter to catch hold of these living “pegs.”
For the rest, crocodiles are said by the Malays to have a sort of false stomach divided into several pouches or sacs, one sac being for the stones which they swallow, and another for the clothes and accoutrements of their human victims, these pouches being in addition to their real stomach (in which the remains of monkeys, wild pig, mouse-deer, and other small animals are found), and, in the case of female specimens, the ovary. The second pair of eyes in the neck which, Mr. Wray says, they are supposed to use when below the surface, are in Selangor supposed to be used at night, whence they are called mata malam, or night-eyes, as opposed to their real eyes which they are supposed to use only by day.
As regards the stones, which crocodiles undoubtedly swallow, they are sometimes supposed to enable each male crocodile to keep an account of the number of rivers which it has entered, of the number of bights it has lived in, or even of the number of its human victims. The noise which crocodiles make when fighting resembles a loud roar or bellow, and the Malays apply the same word mĕnguak to the bellow of the crocodile as well as to that of the buffalo.
The wrath of the crocodile-folk is provoked by those who wish to shoot them, in various ways, of which, perhaps, the commonest is to dabble a sarong, or (as is said to be more effectual) a woman’s mosquito-curtain, in the water of the river where they live. So also to keep two sets of weights and measures (one for buying and another for selling, as is sometimes done by the Chinese), is said to be a certain means of provoking their indignation.