Suddenly there was a loud detonation. The warship had begun firing, and the first shell struck and exploded in the middle of the dam. A great gap opened in it.
“Now! Now!” called the Sturgeon sharply, on seeing that there was room for the torpedo to go through. “Let her go! Let her go!”
As the torpedo came to the surface, the Sturgeon steered it to the opening in the dam, took aim hurriedly with one eye closed, and pulled at the trigger of the torpedo with his teeth. The propeller of the torpedo began to revolve, and it started off upstream toward the gunboat.
And it was high time. At that instant a second shot exploded in the dam, tearing away another large section.
From the wake the torpedo left behind it in the water the men on the vessel saw the danger they were in, but it was too late to do anything about it. The torpedo struck the ship in the middle, and went off.
You can never guess the terrible noise that torpedo made. It blew the warship into fifteen thousand million pieces, tossing guns, and smokestacks, and shells and rowboats—everything, hundreds and hundreds of yards away.
The alligators all screamed with triumph and made as fast as they could for the dam. Down through the opening bits of wood came floating, with a number of sailors swimming as hard as they could for the shore. As the men passed through, the alligators put their paws to their mouths and holloed, as the men had done to them three days before. They decided not to eat a single one of the sailors, though some of them deserved it without a doubt. Except that when a man dressed in a blue uniform with gold braid came by, the old alligator jumped into the water off the dam, and snap! snap! ate him in two mouthfuls.
“Who was that man?” asked an ignorant young alligator, who never learned his lessons in school and never knew what was going on.
“It’s the officer of the boat,” answered the Sturgeon. “My old friend, Ally, said he was going to eat him, and eaten him he has!”
The alligators tore down the rest of the dam, because they knew that no boats would be coming by that way again.