The reptile, slipping back after its failure, maintained its hold on the lower branches with its forefeet. Before it could make a second attempt, Samba had swung himself into the branch above. The tree toppled slightly, and for one moment of terror Samba feared he would be thrown into the very jaws of the monster. But the sandbank held the tree firmly, and that peril was past.
With thick foliage between it and the boy, the crocodile saw no chance of securing its victim from its present position. But it was determined not to be balked, and, cunning beast! could afford to wait. It seemed to know that the boy was only safe so long as he clung to his perch. On the sandbank, or in the water, his end would alike be speedy. So the reptile slid off the bank into the water, and swam to the trunk end of the tree, which had been swung round by the current and was now pointing down stream. If it could not leap, it could crawl, and up the trunk the approach to its prey was easy.
Samba's eyes were now wide with fright, as he saw the beast's intention. Up a tree on the river bank he could have laughed any crocodile to scorn; but this sandbank in midstream was ground peculiarly the creature's own, even though the prey was on a branch ten feet above it. With its experience of sandbanks the crocodile knew there was no permanency in this arrangement.
The attempts of the huge reptile to gain a footing on the trunk had a result which caused Samba mingled hope and fear. The tree floated clear of the bank, and the voyage began again. But how different were the circumstances! In the stern, no longer a cheerful smiling boy, carelessly watching the slow banks glide by, but a boy whose hands and feet gripped his perch with anxious tenacity, and whose scared eyes were quick to mark every movement of the unwelcome, the abhorred, passenger amidships. With many a splash of its tail, and many a grunt of impatient fury, the monster at last made good its footing on the broad trunk, which under its weight was for more than a quarter of its length invisible beneath the surface of the water. For some minutes it lay still, staring at Samba with unwinking eyes, displaying all its teeth as if to grin sardonically at its victim. Samba regretted for the moment that he had not swarmed down from his perch and attacked the crocodile with his knife while he was still struggling to mount the trunk. But then he reflected that he had after all done wisely, for the reptile would have slid back into the water, and before Samba could gain his retreat, he might have been swept off by one swish of the terrible tail.