Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 22)( Page 1 ) The Old Crocodile

We reached the Crocodile River drift on a Sunday morning, after a particularly dry and dusty night trek.  `Wanting a wash' did not on such occasions mean a mild inclination for a luxury: it meant that washing was badly needed.  The dust lay inches deep on the one worn veld road, and the long strings of oxen toiling along kicked up suffocating clouds of fine dust which there was seldom any breeze to carry off: it powdered white man and black to an equal level of yellowy red.  The waggons were a couple of hundred yards from the river; and, taking a complete change, I went off for a real clean up. We generally managed to get in a couple of bathes at the rivers--real swims--but that was only done in the regular drifts and when there were people about or waggons crossing.  In such conditions crocodiles rarely appeared; they prefer solitude and silence.  The swims were very delightful but somewhat different from ordinary bathes; however remote may have been the risk of meeting a crocodile when you dived, or of being grabbed by one as you swam, the idea was always there and made it more interesting. Being alone that day I had no intention of having a swim or of going into the open river, and I took a little trouble to pick a suitable pool with a rock on which to stand and dress.  The water was clear and I could see the bottom of the pool.  It was quite shallow--three feet deep at most--made by a scour in the sandy bed and divided from the main stream by a narrow spit of sand a couple of yards wide and twenty long. At the top end of the sand spit was a flat rock--my dressing table. After a dip in the pool I stood on to the sand spit to scrub off the brown dust, keeping one unsoaped eye roving round for  intrusive crocodiles, and the loaded rifle lying beside me.  The brutes slide out so silently and unexpectedly that in that exposed position, with water all round, one could not afford to turn one's back on any quarter for long.  There is something laughable--it seemed faintly humorous even then--in the idea of a naked man hastily washing soap out of his eyes and squeezing away the water to take a hurried look behind him, and then after careful survey, doing an `altogether' dowse just as hastily-- blowing and spluttering all the time like a boy after his first dive. The bath was successful and ended without incident--not a sign of a crocodile the whole time!  Breakfast was ready when I reached the waggons, and feeling very fit and clean in a fresh flannel shirt and white moleskins, I sat down to it.  Jim Makokel' brought the kettle of coffee from the fire and was in the act of pouring some into a big mug when he stopped with a grunt of surprise and, looking towards the river, called out sharply, "What is it?" One of the herd boys was coming at a trot towards us, and the drivers, thinking something had happened to the oxen, called a question to him. He did not answer until he reached them and even then spoke in so quiet a tone that I could not catch what he said.  But Jim, putting down the kettle, ran to his waggon and grabbing his sticks and assegais called to me in a husky shouting whisper--which imperfectly describes Jim's way of relieving his feelings, without making the whole world echo: "Ingwenye, Inkos!  Ingwenye Umkulu!  Big Clocodile!  Groot Krokodil, Baas!" Then abandoning his excited polyglot he gabbled off in pure Zulu and at incredible speed a long account of the big Crocodile: it had carried off four boys going to the goldfields that year; it had taken a woman and a baby from the kraal near by, but a white man had beaten it off with a bucket; it had taken all the dogs, and even calves and goats, at the drinking-place; and goodness knows how much more.  How Jim got his news, and when he made his friends, were puzzles never solved. Hunting stories, like travellers tales, are proverbially dangerous to reputations, however literally true they may be; and this is necessarily so, partly because only exceptional things are worth telling, and partly because the conditions of the country or the life referred to are unfamiliar and cannot be grasped.  It is a depressing but accepted fact that the ideal, lurid--and, I suppose, convincing--pictures of wild life are done in London, where the author is unhampered by fact or experience. "Stick to the impossible, and you will be believed: keep clear of fact and commonplace, and you cannot be checked."