Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

A Crocodile Story.-We had some talk the other day with one of the very few survivors of the Egyptian expedition under Sir Ralph Abercromby, who has lived to obtain the Egyptian medal fifty years after it was earned. What a mockery to wait until there were not, perhaps ten alive in the country and then award the metals! However, to our story. When the brigade under Sir David Baird was marching up the eastern bank of the Nile, towards Cairo, numbers of stragglers fell behind, unable from fatigue to keep up with the main body. A rear guard was consequently dispatched to protect the stragglers and keep them together. One of them, a Highlander, however, became so exhausted that his comrades were obliged to leave him to his fate. He had not been long alone when he saw a large crocodile wadding towards him with a very portentous aspect. Poor Donald eyed the monster as it approached him with feelings of intense alarm; and although almost unable to walk, he mustered up his little remaining strength, and abided the onslaught of the enemy. As the unwieldy brute was slewing himself round to seize him, Donald dexterously got astride on it, and kept his seat. He at once drew his bayonet (for he had parted with his musket,) and every time the animal turned round its head to bite him, he picked it severely behind his fore leg, or whatever he could make the steel penetrate. How long the contest continued Donald could not tell, but he thought it an age. When the rear guard reached headquarters the general, on being informed that Donald had been left behind, immediately dispatched a corporal’s guard to bring him in. On coming up to Donald, there he was astride of his Bucephalus, which was by this time nearly exhausted with the wounds inflicted by the bayonet. The musket soon accomplished what the bayonet had begun, and Donald was brought into camp little the worse for his extraordinary encounter, and was ever after known to the regiment as the Crocodile Dragoon.