Staunton Spectator

THE ALLIGATOR HUNT.

By a Naval Officer.

I must give a short account of an alligator hunt, at a place called Nellivelly, near Trincomalee, got up for the admiral's express amusement, and performed by a corps of Malays in the British service, the 1st Ceylon Regiment. Very early in the morning of the 22d September, the party, which consisted of several ladies and a large proportion of red coats and blue coats, were summoned from their beds to set forth on this expedition. The admiral, as usual, was up, dressed, and on horseback, long before any of the rest of the company, whom he failed not to scold or to quiz, as they severally crept out of their holes, rubbing their eyes, and very much doubting whether the pleasures of the sport were likely to compensate for the horrible bore of early rising.

In other countries the hour of getting up may be left to choice: in India, when any thing active is to be done, it is a matter of necessity; for after the sun has gained even a few degrees of altitude, the heat and discomfort, as well as the danger of exposure, become so great that all pleasure is at an end. This circumstance limits the hour of travelling and of exercise in the east very inconveniently, and introduces modifications which help in no slight degree to give a distinctive character to Indian manners. As there was little risk of being too late on any party of which Sir Sam'l. Hood took the lead, the day had scarcely began to dawn when we all cantered up to the scene of action.

The ground lay as flat as a marsh for many leagues: here and there the plain was spotted with small stagnant lakes, connected by sluggish streams or canals, scarcely moving over beds of mud, between banks fringed with a rank crop of draggled weeds, and giving birth to clouds of musquitoes. The chill atmosphere of the morning felt so thick and clammy it was impossible for the most confident in his own strength and health not to think of agues, jungle fevers, and all the hopeful family of Malaria. The hardy native soldiers, who had occupied the ground during the night in despite of the miasmata, were drawn up to receive the admiral- and a very queer guard of honor they formed. The whole regiment had stripped off their uniform, and every other stitch of clothing save a pair of short trousers and a kind of sandal. In place of a firelock, each man bore in his hand a slender pole, about six feet in length, to the extremity of which was attached the bayonet of his musket. His only other weapon was the Malay crease.

Soon after the commander-in-chief came to the ground the regiment was divided into two main parties and a body of reserves. The principal columns, facing one to the right and the other to the left, proceeding to occupy different points in one of these sluggish canals I have already mentioned, connecting the lakes or pools scattered over the plain. These detachments being stationed about a mile from one another, enclosed at intervals where, from some peculiar circumstances known only to the Malays, who are passionately fond of this sport the alligators were sure to be found in great numbers. The troops formed themselves across the canal in three parallel lines, ten or twelve feet apart; but the men in each line stood side by side, merely leaving room enough to wield their pikes. The canal may have been about four or five feet deep in the middle of the stream, if stream it may be called, when it scarcely moved at all. The color of the water when undisturbed was a shade between ink and coffee; but no sooner had the triple line of Malays set themselves in motion, and the mud got stirred up, than the consistency and color of the fluid became like those of pease soup.

On every thing being reported ready, the soldiers planted their pikes before them in the mud, and, if I recollect right, each man crossing his neighbor's weapon, and at the word "march," away they all started in full cry, sending forth a shout, or war whoop, sufficient to curdle the blood of those on land, whatever effect it may have had on the inhabitants of the deep. As the two divisions of the invading army, starting from opposite ends of the canal, gradually approached each other in pretty close column, screaming and yelling with all their souls, and striking their pikes deep in the slime before them, the startled animals naturally retired towards the unoccupied centre.

Generally speaking, the alligators or crocodiles (for I believe they are very nearly the same) had sense enough to turn their long tails upon their assailants, and to scuttle off as fast as they could towards the middle part of the canal. But every now and then one of the terrified monsters, either confused by the sound or provoked by the prick of a pike, or mystified by the turbid nature of the stream, floundered backwards, and by retreating in the wrong direction, broke through the first, second, and even third line of pikes. This, which would have been any thing but amusement to unpractised hands, was the perfection of sport to the delighted Malays. A double circle of soldiers was speedily formed round the wretched aquatic who had presumed to pass the barrier. By means of well directed thrusts with numberless bayonets, and the pressure of some dozens of feet, the poor brute was often driven beneath his native mud. When once there, his enemies half choaked and half spitted him, till at last they put an end to his miserable days in regions quite out of sight, and in a manner as inglorious as can well be imagined. For the poor denizens of the pool, indeed, it was the choice between Scylla and Charybdis with a vengeance; and I am half ashamed to acknowledge that savage kind of delight with which we stood on the banks, and saw the distracted creatures rushing from one attack right into another. The Malays, in their ecstasy, declared that the small fry from one side rushed down the throats of the big ones whom they met flying in the opposite direction. But this seems very questionable, though positively asserted by the enraptured natives, who redoubled their shouts as the plot thickened, and the two bodies of troops marched from opposite quarters down within a hundred yards of each other. The intermediate space was now pretty well crowded with alligators, swimming about in the utmost terror; at times diving below, and anon showing their noses, well plastered with mud, high above the surface of the dirty stream; or occasionally making a furious bolt in sheer despair right at the phalanx of Malays. On these occasions half a dozen of the soldiers were often upset, and their pikes either broken or twisted out of their hand, to the infinite amusement of their companions, who speedily closed up the broken ranks, as if their comrades had been shot down in battle. The killed were none, but the wounded many- yet no man flinched in the least.

The perfection of the sport appeared to consist in detaching a single alligator from the rest, surrounding and attacking him separately, and spearing him till he was almost dead. The Malays then, by main strength, forked him aloft over their heads, on the end of a dozen pikes, and by a sudden jerk pitched the conquered monster far on the shore. As the alligators are amphibious, they kept to the water no longer than they found they had an advantage in that element; but as the period of the final melee approached, on the two columns of their enemy closing up, the monsters lost all discipline, floundered, and ploutered up the weedy banks, scuttling away to the right and left, helter skelter. "Sauve qui peut!" seemed to be the fatal watch-word for their total route. That prudent cry would no doubt have saved many of them, as it has saved many other vanquished forces, had not the Malays judiciously placed beforehand their reserve on each side of the river to receive the distracted fugitives, who bathed in mud, and half dead with terror, but still in a prodigious fury, dashed off at right angles from the canal, in hopes of gaining the shelter of a swampy pool, overgrown with reeds and bulrushes, but which, alas for most of the poor beasts, they were never doomed to reach.

The concluding battle between these retreating and desperate alligators and the Malays, of the reserve, was formidable enough. Indeed, had not the one party been fresh, the other exhausted, one confident, the other broken in spirit, it is quite possible that the crocodiles might have worsted the pirates, as the Malays were called in every other part of the world but the East, where they are generally admitted to be as good a set of people as any of their neighbors.

It is needless to say, that while all this was going on, our gallant Admiral, Sir Samuel Hood, was a pretty busy spectator. His eagle eye glanced along the canal, and at a moment took in the whole purpose of the campaign. As the war advanced, and sundry affairs of out-posts took place, we could see his face flushing with delight. But when the first alligator was cast headlong and gasping at his feet, pierced with at least twenty pike wounds, and bristled with half-a-dozen fragments of these weapons fractured in the onslaught, the whole plain rung with his exclamation of boyish delight. When the detachments closed in upon their prey, and every moment gave birth to some new prodigy of valour, or laid a whole line of Malay soldiers prostrate on the muddy stream, like so many nine-pins, I verily believe, that if none of his own people had been present, the admiral would have seized a pike himself, and jumped into the thickest of the fight, boots, sword, cocked hat, and all! As it was, he kept himself close to the banks, and rivalled the best Malay amongst them in yelling and cheering on the forces to their duty.

This intensity of eagerness had well nigh proved rather awkward for his excellency's dignity, if not his safety: for, in spite of the repeated warnings of the English officers of the regiment, who knew from former hunts what was sure to happen eventually, the admiral persisted in approaching the edge of the canal as the final act of the alligators' tragedy commenced. And as we, his poor officers, were, of course, obliged to follow our chief into any danger, a considerable party of us found ourselves rather awkwardly placed between the reserves of Malays already spoken of and the canal, just as the grand race took place at the close of the battle. If the infuriated crocodiles had only known what they were about, and had then brought their long sharp snouts, and still harder tails, into play, several of his Majesty's officers might have chanced to have found themselves in a scrape. As it was, we were extremely near being wedged in between the animals' noses and the pikes and creases of the wild Malays. It was difficult indeed, to say which of the two looked at that moment the most savage-- the triumphant natives or the flying troop of alligators wallopping away from the water. Many on both sides were wounded, and all, without exception, covered with slime & weeds. Some of our party were actually pushed over, and fell plump in the mud, to the very provoking and particular amusement of the delighted admiral, whose superior adroitness enabled him to avoid such an undignified catastrophe, by jumping first on one side and then on the other; in a manner which excited both mirth and the alarm of his company; though, of course, we took good care rather to laugh with our commander-in-chief than at him. I forget the total number of alligators killed, but certainly there could not have been fewer than thirty or forty. The largest measured ten feet in length, and four feet in girth, the head being exactly two feet long.