62
She
hind claws in the crocodile’s, comparatively speaking, soft throat, ripping it open as one would rip a glove.
Then, all of a sudden, the end came. The lion’s head fell forward on the crocodile’s back, and with an awful groan he died, and the crocodile, after standing for a minute motionless, slowly rolled over on to his side, his jaws still fixed across the carcase of the lion, which, we afterwards found, he had bitten almost in halves.
This duel to the death was a wonderful and a shocking sight, and one that I suppose few men have seen—and thus it ended.
When it was all over, leaving Mahomed to keep a look out, we managed to spend the rest of the night as quietly as the mosquitoes would allow.
