“Aye, brother, just now you would think one very beautiful, especially with bread-sauce.”
“Never mind, Claud; if I can only get sight of one, we will have him, and dressed, too, before we return to the prahu; nevertheless, they are pretty birds. Don’t you remember darling old Goldsmith’s anecdote about their beautiful plumage?”
“Repeat it, Martin, and it will turn you from your barbarous design.”
“Well, then, after telling us that ‘next to the peacock the pheasant is the most beautiful of birds, as well for the nice color of their plumes as for their happy mixtures and variety,’ he says that Crœsus, King of Lydia, being seated upon the throne, adorned with royal magnificence and all the barbaric pomp of Eastern splendor, asked Solon, if he had ever beheld anything so fine? The Greek philosopher, no way moved by the objects before him, or taking a pride in his native simplicity, replied that, after having seen the beautiful plumage of the pheasant, he could be astonished at no other finery.
“There, Claud, you have the anecdote; but what does it prove? Not that Solon did not like them with bread-sauce, but that the old Greek, having a reputation for wisdom, wanted to sustain it by saying a clever thing, or that, in his heart, he looked upon the king’s riches and splendor as the fox did at the grapes—‘they were so much beyond his reach that they must be sour.’ But, hilloa, Kati! what’s a-do now?” he said, as he saw our companion take off his sarong, and bind it tightly around his left arm.
“Hush!” replied the latter, placing his finger upon his lips, and pointing to a small boat, rowed by a single inmate, that had just rounded a bend of the river and was approaching us.
“Well, what matters? He is only one and we are three,” replied Martin, thinking Kati regarded the boatman as some suspicious personage; but when the latter, pointing in the wake of the boat, whispered the word “man-eater,” he trembled indeed, and so did I; for we could now see the long scales, dark, hideous body, and snout of a huge crocodile. The man, too, evidently knew his danger, for he was pulling with might and main to outrun the reptile, knowing that if it once got so far ahead that it could get its tail beneath the boat, he would himself soon fill its jaws.
“What shall we do—what can we do—to help the poor fellow?” I cried.
“Wait till its snout gets a little higher above water, and then send a bullet into him,” said Martin.
“No, no, sahib—not good; man-eater not care for that—his scales like one wall.”