But if you accept it,
A reach up-stream or a reach down-stream, there do you await me;
It is not my Word, it is King Solomon’s Word;
If you are carried down-stream see that you incline up-stream,
If you are carried up-stream see that you incline down-stream,
By virtue of the Saying of King Solomon, ‘There is no god but God,’” etc.
Then take a canoe paddle (to symbolise the crocodile’s tail) and some strong thread, fasten one end of the thread to the front of the floating platform, and the other end to the bow of your boat, back water till it grows taut, and strike the surface of the water thrice with the aforesaid “mock” crocodile’s tail. If the first time you strike it the sound is clearest (tĕrek bunyi) it is an omen that the crocodile will swallow the bait the first day; if the second time, it will be the second day when he does so; if the third time, it will be the third day. But every time you strike the water you must say to yourself, “From Fatimah was your origin” (Mani Fatimah asal’kau jadi), in order to make the crocodile bold. After striking the water you may go home and rest; but you must get up again in any case at about two in the afternoon (dlohor), and whatever happens you must remember never to pass underneath a low overhanging bough (because such a bough would resemble the bent rod of the floating platform), and never (for the time being) to eat your curry without starting by swallowing three lumps of rice successively. If you do this it will help the bait to slide more easily down the crocodile’s throat, and in the same way you must never, until the brute is safely landed, take any bones out of the meat in your curry—if you do, the wooden cross-piece is sure to get loose and work out of the fowl—so it is just as well to get somebody to take the bones out of your meat before you begin, otherwise you may at any moment be compelled to choose between swallowing a bone and losing all your labour.
I will pass on to the final capture. The crocodile has taken the bait, we will say, and with the last of the ebb, not unfrequently in a perilously rickety boat, you go out to look for the tell-tale end of the line that floats up among the forked roots of the mangrove trees. First you must go to the place where you left the floating platform; take hold of the pole to which it is moored and press it downwards into the river-bottom, saying (to the hooked crocodile) as you do so:—
“Do not run away,
Our agreement was a cape (further) up-stream,