“I should say not!” laughed the captain who went by just in time to hear what was said. “Wait till the sun gets up high and the air is hotter—then you’ll see them! Had breakfast yet?”
After breakfast he took the four children up by his pilot house and let them sit on a bench there that gave them a fine view of the river and woods. But though they looked and watched till their eyes ached, not a ’gator did they see!
“I don’t believe there are any,” exclaimed Alice in disgust, “and I’m going to walk around the back of the boat. When we go around that bend we’re coming to I’m sure I can pull some leaves off that great tree. And I’d love to have them in my collection—‘leaves pulled from the boat on the Ocklawaha’—wouldn’t that look well in my book?”
“I think I’ll go too,” said Katherine, who, when she saw how interested Alice was in her collection, immediately wanted to make one for herself.
“I think I’ll fish,” said Ned; “Father said once he caught a turtle from the boat.” And he too disappeared from the captain’s deck.
Mary Jane, left alone, couldn’t quite make up her mind what to do. It wasn’t any fun staying up there all alone, for the captain was so busy with his steering that he wasn’t a bit of company; she had a notion to go to the back of the boat with the other girls.
Just as she was slipping down from the bench she heard a splash at the bank on the south side of the river, and looking quickly, she spied a great log floating slowly down the stream.
“What made that log fall in?” she asked curiously; “I didn’t see anybody push it!”
Splash! There went another one!
“Funny!” exclaimed Mary Jane to herself now much interested; “now what made that one go, I wonder.” Just then Mrs. Merrill came to the foot of the ladder leading to the captain’s deck.