“He’ll soon come to the surface,” predicted Jeff Randolph, coolly. “Better get in closer, Cap’n.”
The launch was still going ahead, slowly, when the alligator came up, its head almost under the gunwale. The reptile’s broad mouth opened, then the teeth snapped together, viciously.
Henry Tremaine leaned over the gunwale, and fired a shot that went in through an eye, penetrating the reptile’s brain.
“Back off a bit, Cap’n,” advised Jeff. “We-all will soon have him.”
Hardly a minute passed before the alligator, its last struggle finished under water, rose and lay on its back motionless.
“A higher type of animal, with a more vital brain, would have been killed quicker,” observed Henry Tremaine, running a cleaning rod down his rifle barrel.
The four men following in the rowboat now lashed one end of a line around the dead ’gator, the other end being secured at the stern of the launch.
“How many of these things can we tow?” asked Mrs. Tremaine.
“I don’t know, my dear, until I see how many we can get,” smiled her husband. “I’d attempt to tow a long string of ’gators before I’d consent to leave any of our game behind.”
“Fortunately we’ve food enough aboard so that we don’t need to mind, much, if we have to spend most of the night towing dead alligators home,” replied Mrs. Tremaine.