“Hallo!” I exclaimed. “What’s that?”
“’Gator head, Mass’ George. Pomp find um ’tuck in dah ’tween um two trees.”
He illustrated his meaning by showing me how the head had been washed from its place, and swept between a couple of tree-stumps, where it had remained covered with mud and rubbish, till it had caught his eye, such a trophy being too valuable to lie there in neglect.
I stopped till he had done, and then, all wet and glistening, the great dried head with its gaping jaws was replaced on the spike-nail Morgan had driven in the tree.
“Dah, you ’top till water come and wash um down again, and den Pomp come and wash um up.”
These words of the boy set me thinking; and that night I asked my father about the probabilities of another flood.
“It is impossible to say how long it may be before we have another visitation,” he replied. “From what I can gather, it seems that they are so rare that a generation may go by without such a flood occurring, and I hardly like to give up so satisfactory a home on the chance of a fresh one coming during our lives.”
“Oh no, father, don’t give it up,” I said. “Everything at the settlement seems to be straight again.”
“They suffered more than we did too,” he continued.
“But don’t you think some one ought to have come in a boat to help us?”