low wailing sound.

"How horrid!" whispered Frank.

"What does it mean? Are they sorry we've killed it?"

"No, they have found something inside the beast which tells them that we
have caught the right croc. I daresay it's the one that took the poor
girl."

Frank was right, and after a time the lads returned, the crowd--a part
of which had gone back in procession toward one of the houses--making
way for them.

The men standing about the horrible reptile gave them a quiet but warm
greeting, and there was a look of triumph in their eyes as one of them
told Frank, what he afterwards interpreted to his companion, that this
was undoubtedly the monster that had taken the poor girl; and they
showed him too a silver ornament, blackened and strange looking, which
must have been in the creature for perhaps months.

Ned turned shuddering away from this recital to examine the hideous
mud-coloured brute, Frank eagerly showing him how the loose strands had
opened out as the reptile bit at them, its great teeth passing through
without damaging the strength of the rope; and it was interesting to see
how the hook had taken too fast a hold to be dislodged. Then he
examined the great bulky body with its crooked legs and claws, and the
formidable tail, everything tending to show that it was a reptile just
in the full vigour of its existence.

"They never get bigger than this, do they?" said Ned, after a careful
measurement had proved the crocodile to be within an inch or two of
eighteen feet, and bulky in proportion.

"Bigger? Yes, half as big again. My father saw one twenty-five feet
long, but he says those very large ones are so heavy that they are slow
and not so dangerous. It is those fellows from fifteen feet to eighteen
that the men are most afraid of. They can quite dart through the water
like a fish."

"What will they do with it?"

"They are going to leave it here till our people have seen it, and then
throw it in the river again. And I hope," added Ned merrily, "it will
be a lesson to all the others, and that they will behave better. Here,
come along, and let's get something to eat. I say, what a horrid mess!"

"It's dishgusting, sor," said Tim. "Here, I must light a pipe to take
the taste out of my mouth. But it's a puzzle--a reg'lar conundhrum,
that's what it is."

"What's a conundrum?"

"Why sor, whatever crocodiles could have been made for. But I say,
Masther Frank, he thought it was a chicken. H