ous; but the party decided to kill no more of them, for they held
still, as though they were all ready to be shot; and there was no sport in
such game.

The boat continued on its course for half an hour longer, and then came up
to a sort of stockade, extending out into the water, and near it were a
couple of bamboo huts. This wild region is sparsely peopled with Hindus,
who are obliged to keep guard over themselves and their families all the
time, and are occasionally the victims of the ferocious monsters of the
jungle and of the water.

"What is that stockade for?" asked the commander, as soon as the steamer
was moored to the shore.

"The Hindus are a cleanly people, as required by their religion," replied
Captain O'Flaherty in the hearing of all the party. "That stockade contains
a big trough for washing their scanty clothing. It reaches into the water,
so that they can fill their washtub without going out of it."

"I don't see why?" asked Mrs. Woolridge.

"If they went to the border of the stream to dip up water the crocodiles
would pick them up as fast as they did so," added the captain; and all the
ladies shuddered, and wanted to get out of such a horrible place.

"But the hunters are to land here; and they will find all the heavy game
they can dispose of, for there have been no hunters here yet this season to
scare them off. You will find the biggest tigers of India here, gentlemen."

The hunters went on shore, and as they passed down the gangway they saw a
couple of the crocodiles in the water. Louis put a bullet into the eye of
one, and Mr. Woolridge served the other in the same way; but all of them
thought saurians were mean game. Near the huts they found two men, and Sir
Modava had a talk with them, which no one else could understand; but he
employed them to guide the party and show them their traps.

"The wife of one of these men was devoured by a crocodile a year ago, and
the daughter of the other, a child of six, had been borne off by a tiger,"
he explained, as they proceeded after the two men.

They soon came to the traps. The tigers were exceedingly numerous on all
the islands formed by the cut-offs, and swam without difficulty from one to
another. The first trap they saw was a broad trench, the bottom and sides
armed with stakes of the hardest wood, sharpened to a wicked point. A
roaring sound attracted the visitors to another of the same kind, in which
a monstrous tiger was floundering about, tr