Once they had escaped from Jack’s blighted jagir the landscape was pleasant enough, but uniform and monotonous: ditched and irrigated fields alternating with groves of food-bearing trees, and occasional stretches of jungle covering hills, vales, and other areas that were not suited to agriculture. Sometimes they had to pass through such parts; the jungle seemed to rush out of the night to envelop them, and they moved forward with extreme care, expecting stranglers to abseil from overhead limbs, or large man-eating felines to explode from the brush. They had to ford several rivers, which in this part of the world meant wading through crocodiles. At one of these fords, Danny noticed a pair of largish reptilian nostrils closing in on a boy who was straggling behind the main group, and discharged his pistol in that general direction. It probably had no effect on the crocodile, but it scared the boy into catching up. At another ford, an immense crocodile carried away one of their donkeys.