Then his restless eye caught the least possible ripple on the water, and he went on quickly: "Life is hard for us all, and I doubt not that even our excellent master, the Pride of the Ghaut and the Envy of the River "
"But surely I saw Marigold wreaths floating off the edge of the Ghaut only this noon," said the Adjutant.
She loses her eyesight year by year, and cannot tell a log from me--the Mugger of the Ghaut. I saw the mistake when she threw the garland, for I was lying at the very foot of the Ghaut, and had she taken another step I might have shown her some little difference.
The village was deep in flood, and I swam above the Ghaut and went far inland, up to the rice-fields, and they were deep in good mud.
But that goat I accepted, and went down to the Ghaut in great honour.
The old Mugger knows that a boy has been born in that house, and must some day come down to the Ghaut to play.
As surely as I had picked up one of his workmen, and thus saved great expense in wood for the burning, so surely would he come down to the Ghaut, and shout in a loud voice that he would hunt me, and rid the river of me--the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut!
So I lived by the Ghaut, very close to my own people, and I watched over them year after year; and they loved me so much that they threw marigold wreaths at my head whenever they saw it lift.
In ninety- nine cases out of a hundred a mortally-wounded crocodile can scramble to deep water and get away; but the Mugger of Mugger- Ghaut was literally broken into three pieces.