I immediately offered to knock him down for his
cowardice, and he shrunk back, begging that I would be cautious, and not
get myself worried, and apologising for his own want of resolution. My
Indian was now in conversation with the others, and they asked if I would
allow them to shoot a dozen arrows into him, and thus disable him. This
would have ruined all. I had come above three hundred miles on purpose to
get a cayman uninjured, and not to carry back a mutilated specimen. I
rejected their proposition with firmness, and darted a disdainful eye upon
the Indians.
Daddy Quashi was again beginning to remonstrate, and I chased him on the
sandbank for a quarter of a mile. He told me afterwards he thought he
should have dropped down dead with fright, for he was firmly persuaded if I
had caught him I should have bundled him into the cayman's jaws. Here,
then, we stood in silence like a calm before a thunderstorm. "Hoc res summa
loco. Scinditur in contraria vulgus." They wanted to kill him, and I wanted
to take him alive.
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