“Your hand!” he cried. “Like lightning!”
As she sprang, then half-stumbled, the alligator’s head was hardly more than twenty feet away. With a quick out-shoot of its breath the big creature hastened forward.
Tom half lifted, half dragged Ida into the boat, at the same time taking the tiller stick from her. Almost at the instant when her heels cleared the gunwale a huge pair of jaws loomed up close beside the bow.
Not really pausing to think what he did, Halstead let out a yell that would have done credit to one of the Seminole aborigines of the Everglades. In the same flashing instant he rammed the tiller stick far down into the mouth of the alligator.
His left hand caught the reverse gear. The propeller churned and the launch glided out, stern foremost, into deeper water, while the alligator, bringing its jaws down with a crunching snap on the bar of wood, went through some absurd antics in trying to expel the tiller stick from its mouth. Then Tom Halstead laughed.
“Not such bad sport, eh, Miss Silsbee?”
He had backed far enough out, now, to turn on the speed ahead and swing around, heading north.
Though she trembled a bit from excitement, Ida Silsbee leaned forward, catching the boy’s disengaged right hand and holding it in friendly pressure for a moment.
“Tom Halstead, it’s more than a pleasure to know one like you!”
The young captain laughed quietly as he thanked her.