"By the Right and Left of Gunga! when I came there never did I
see such waters!"

"Were they better, then, than the big flood of last season?"
said the Jackal.

"Better! That flood was no more than comes every five years--
a handful of drowned strangers, some chickens, and a dead
bullock in muddy water with cross-currents. But the season
I think of, the river was low, smooth, and even, and, as the
Gavial had warned me, the dead English came down, touching each
other. I got my girth in that season--my girth and my depth.
>From Agra, by Etawah and the broad waters by Allahabad----"

"Oh, the eddy that set under the walls of the fort at
Allahabad!" said the Adjutant. "They came in there like
widgeon to the reeds, and round and round they swung--thus!"

He went off into his horrible dance again, while the Jackal
looked on enviously. He naturally could not remember the
terrible year of the Mutiny they were talking about.
The Mugger continued:

"Yes, by Allahabad one lay still in the slack-water and let
twenty go by to pick one; and, above all, the English were not
cumbered with jewellery and nose-rings and anklets as my women
are nowadays. To delight in ornaments is to end with a rope for
a necklace, as the saying is. All the muggers of all the rivers
grew fat then, but it was my Fate to be fatter than them all.
The news was that the English were being hunted into the