“Paddle ashore, Carl!” called Bob.
“Dot’s so,” gasped Carl; “meppy I vill. Coax der pig feller avay; I don’d like how he uses dot tail of his.”
Carl fell to work with his paddle. By that time, however, the alligator’s temper was aroused, and, before Carl had got the pitpan turned, the big creature glided forward, opened its ponderous jaws and closed them about the forward end of the dugout.
There was a frightful crash, and the sides of the pitpan were stove in like an eggshell. One end of the wrecked boat was pushed high in the water, and Carl, at the other end, was in sore straits.
“Help, or I’m a goner!” yelled Carl, leaping into the water as Bob Steele made ready to hurl the harpoon.
Carl’s predicament had become serious in the extreme. If the enraged reptile turned on him, his doom was sealed. The task for Bob and Dick, which they recognized on the instant, was to wound the alligator and take its attention from the boy in the water.
The harpoon left Bob’s hand, and the hatchet left Dick’s, at the same moment. The hatchet was turned by the reptile’s scaly coat as by so much armor plate. The harpoon, however, by mere chance, stuck just back of the alligator’s foreleg in the place where the hide was not so thick. The big fellow had lifted head and shoulders out of the water in the fierceness of the attack on the pitpan—which fact alone made Bob’s blow possible.
Dick, tumbling out of the conning tower, seized one end of a coil of rope and hurled it toward Carl. The Dutch boy grabbed it, and Dick drew him in rapidly, hand over hand.
The alligator, meantime, had whipped away around the bow of the Grampus, half its head only on the surface, and leaving a reddened trail in its wake. Meanwhile, Carl, sputtering and gasping, fell dripping on the submarine’s deck.
“Am I here?” he mumbled. “I tell you somet’ing, dot vas der glosest call I efer hat in my life!”