shiver chasing itself up and down
my spine.

The Doctor nodded.

"The river is alive with them," he said. "Man-eaters, too. The port
surgeon told me that they get a native or so every day."

"I've changed my mind about wanting a swim," I remarked, heading for
the ship's shower-bath.

* * * * *

(Dusk is settling on the great river and the palm fronds are gently
stirring before the breeze that comes with nightfall on the Line. If
you have nothing better to do, suppose you sit down beside me in a
deck-chair and let me tell you something about these cruel and cunning
monsters and the curious methods by which they are captured. _Boy! Pass
the cheroots and bring us something cold to drink._)

Though crocodiles are found everywhere in Malaysia, they attain their
greatest size and ferocity in the rivers of Borneo, it being no
uncommon thing for them to attack and capsize the frail native canoes,
killing their occupants as they flounder in the water. I suppose that
the crocodile of Borneo more nearly approaches the giant saurians of
prehistoric times than anything alive to-day. Imagine, if you please, a
creature as large as a ship's launch, with the swiftness and ferocity
of a man-eating shark, the cunning of a snake, a body so heavily
armored with scales that it is impervious to everything save the most
high-powered bullets, a tail that is capable of knocking down an ox,
and a pair of jaws that can cut a man in two at a single snap. How
would you like to encounter that sort of thing when you were having a
pleasant swim, I ask you? Compared to the crocodile of Malaysia, the
Florida alligator is about as formidable as a lizard. One was captured
while we were at Sandakan which measured slightly over twenty-eight
feet from the end of his ugly snout to the tip of his vicious tail.
Before you raise your eyebrows incredulously you might take a look at
the accompanying photograph of this monster. Nor was this a record
crocodile, for, shortly before our arrival at Samarinda, one was caught
in the Koetei which measured ten metres, or within a few inches of
thirty-three feet.

The crocodile obtains its meals by the simple expedient of lying
motionless just beneath the surface of a pool where the natives are
accustomed to bathe or where they go for water. The unsuspecting brown
girl trips jauntily down to the river-bank to fill her
amphora--usually a battered Standard Oil tin. As she bends over the