“Malays are not good people,” he said, “and before the first white Rajah came to our country, they did many wicked things. In the time of long ago, a Malay caught a crocodile; this was treacherous of him, because he tied a dog to a wooden hook attached to a long piece of rattan which he made fast to a tree, leaving its loose end floating on the river. The dog howled and attracted a hungry crocodile, who swam joyfully to the spot, and, in spite of the warnings of his friend, the alligator bird, he snapped at the bait. He swallowed the dog and hook at one gulp, when the hook fixed itself in his throat, as the Malay had intended, and the beast could neither swallow the hook nor spit it up, and therefore his jaw was prised open. The Malay, seeing the loose end of the rattan floating down the river, paddled after it, but the beast was too quick for him, and got away from the country near the sea to the country of the Land Dyaks, more inland. A member of Pa Baniak’s tribe, passing by in a canoe, noticed the crocodile’s open jaw and felt sorry for him. The crocodile begged the man to put his arm down his throat and wrench the hook away. Thinking it might be dangerous, the Dyak did not much like the task, and inquired what the crocodile would do for him in return. ‘I promise never to attack or eat any member of your tribe,’ said the crocodile. The man thought this a fair offer, and the compact was made, after which the man removed the hook. The operation over, the crocodile thanked his deliverer, and told him to warn all his people to thrust wooden discs in the cartilage of their ears, so that crocodiles should not mistake them for members of some other tribe.” To prove the truth of this tale, Pa Baniak informed me that, only a few days before our arrival at Paku, a young man of his tribe had been seized by a crocodile as he was taking fruit from his orchard down the river to the Kuching market. With a switch of its tail the animal sent the canoe up in the air, and as its occupant, paddle in hand, was falling into its formidable jaws, the beast noticed the wooden discs, and finding that the man’s flesh did not taste nice, he threw him on shore and went away snorting with disgust. Bertram and I made ejaculations of approval at the end of this tale, and Pa Baniak was mightily pleased at the effect he had produced.