“How, how!” cried Bruff, throwing up his head and giving vent to a most dismal yell, as if overpowered by the recollection.
“Ah, I said as they likes dog,” said Billy Widgeon sententiously.
Bang, bang!
Then, as the smoke rose up slowly after the discharge of both barrels of his piece, Morgan exclaimed:
“See that?”
“See it! I nearly felt it,” cried the major, drawing back from the edge of the disturbed pool, from which a good-sized crocodile, evidently pressed by hunger, had charged out at his legs. “Did you hit him?”
“Yes, I must have hit him both times, for he swerved at the first shot, and turned back at the second; but small-shot can’t do much harm to one of these scaly-hided ruffians.”
“Well, I should like to kill that brute,” said the major, looking ruffled, and speaking as if he thought that a great insult had been offered to an officer in Her Majesty’s service. “Think it was the one which laid hold of the dog?”
“How, how!” cried Bruff piteously, and then, trotting on three legs to the water’s edge, he began to bark furiously.
“Call him away,” cried Morgan excitedly, cocking his gun and following the dog; “that pool swarms with the beasts.”