“Who is it?” answered the Sturgeon.
“We’re the alligators,” the latter replied in a chorus.
“I have nothing to do with alligators,” grumbled the Sturgeon crossly.
But now the old alligator with the two teeth stepped forward and said:
“Why, hello, Sturgy. Don’t you remember Ally, your old friend that took that trip down the river, when we were boys?”
“Well, well! Where have you been keeping yourself all these years,” said the Sturgeon, surprised and pleased to hear his old friend’s voice. “Sorry I didn’t know it was you! How goes it? What can I do for you?”
“We’ve come to ask you for that torpedo you found, remember? You see, there’s a warship keeps coming up and down our river scaring all the fish away. She’s a whopper, I’ll tell you, armor plate, guns, the whole thing! We made one dam and she knocked it down. We made another and she blew it up. The fish have all gone away and we haven’t had a bite to eat in near onto a week. Now you give us your torpedo and we’ll do the rest!”
The Sturgeon sat thinking for a long time, scratching his chin with one of his fins. At last he answered:
“As for the torpedo, all right! You can have it in spite of what you did to my eldest son’s first-born. But there’s one trouble: who knows how to work the thing?”
The alligators were all silent. Not one of them had ever seen a torpedo.