“Warn’t a tree at all, lad, only a ’gator fast asleep on the top of the water going west and warming his back in the sun same time.”
“An alligator?”
“Yes, my lad. Didn’t you see what a flap he gave with his tail! But now just look there at Mr Jovanni. I call it rank obstinit. Just as if there was no other place where he could sit but right on the starn! There, you’re friends, and he’ll take it better from you. Go through the cabin and ask him to get off. I don’t want him to go overboard.”
“Neither do I, Shaddy, but we are not friends, and if I ask him he will stop there all the more.”
“Then I must,” said Shaddy. “Hi, Mr Jovanni, sir! Don’t sit there; it ain’t safe.”
“Oh yes, I’m quite safe,” cried the boy sharply. “Never mind me.”
“Hark at him! Don’t mind him! What’ll his father say to me if I go back without him? Pull, lads, pull!”
Shaddy’s order was necessary, for a huge tree—unmistakably a tree this time—lay right across their way just where the river made a sudden bend round to their left.
The better way would have been to have gone to the right, where there was more room, but, the curve of the river being of course on that side greater, there would not have been time to get round before the boat was swept in amongst the branches, so perforce their steersman made for the left.
This took them close in to where the bank should have been, but which was now submerged, and the boat floated close in to the great wall of trees marking the edge of the stream, and so little room was there that, to avoid the floating tree-top, the boat was forced close in shore, where the stream at the bend ran furiously.