Two or three days after the bait has been taken, the Malays seek for the end of the long rattan fastened to it. When found, they give it a slight pull, which breaks the threads that fasten the stick up the side of the bait, and it spreads across the alligator’s stomach. They then haul it towards them. It never appears to struggle, but permits its captors to bind its legs over its back. Till this is done they speak to it with the utmost respect, and address it in a soothing voice; but as soon as it is secured they raise a yell of triumph, and take it in procession down the river to the landing-place. It is then dragged ashore amid many expressions of condolence at the pain it must be suffering from the rough stones; but being safely ashore, their tone is jeering, as they address it as Rajah, Datu, and grandfather. It then receives its death at the hands of the public executioner. Its stomach is afterwards ripped open, to see if it be a man-eater. I have often seen the buttons of a woman’s jacket, or the tail of a Chinese, taken out. The alligator always appears to swallow its food whole. Some men are very expert in catching these reptiles; I remember one Malay, who came over from the Dutch possessions, capturing thirteen during a few months, and as the Sarawak Government pay three shillings and sixpence for every foot the beast measures, the man made a large sum. Alligators sometimes attain to a very large size. I have never measured one above seventeen feet six inches, but I saw a well-known animal, the terror of the Siol branch of the Sarawak, that must have been at least twenty-four or twenty-five feet long. The natives say the alligator dies if wounded about the body, as the river-worms get into the injured part, and prevent its healing; many have been found dying on the banks from gunshot wounds. In the rivers are occasionally found curious balls of hair, five or six inches in diameter, that are ejected from these reptiles’ stomachs,--the indigestible remains of animals captured. I once lost an acquaintance in Sarawak who was killed by an alligator. He was seized round the chest by the jaws of an enormous beast that swam with his prey along the surface of the water. His children, who had accompanied him to bathe, ran along the banks of the river shouting to him to push out the animal’s eyes; they say he looked at them, but that he neither moved nor spoke, paralyzed, as it were, by the grip. I am very partial to this tribe of Lingga Dayaks; they have always shown so unmistakable a preference for the English--faithful under every temptation, and ready at a moment’s warning to back them up with a force of a thousand men.