Then the alligator started to swim away with poor Bawly, to take him off to his deep, dark, dismal den, when, all of a sudden, Sammie happened to think of the two willow whistles he had—his own and Bawly’s.
“I wonder if I could scare the alligator with them, and make him let Bawly go?” Sammie thought. Then he made up a plan. He crept softly to one side, and he hid behind a stump. Then he took the two whistles and he put them into his mouth.
Next, the rabbit boy gathered up a whole lot of little stones in a pile. And the next thing he did was to build a little fire out of dry sticks. Then he hunted up an old tin can that had once held baked beans, but which now didn’t have anything in it.
“Oh, I’ll make that alligator wish he’d never caught Bawly!” exclaimed Sammie, working very quickly, for the savage reptile was fast swimming away with the frog boy.
Sammie put the stones in the tin can, together with some water, and he set the can on the fire to boil, and he knew the stones would get hot, too, as well as the water. And, surely enough, soon the water in the can was bubbling and the stones were very hot.
Then Sammie took a long breath and he blew on those whistles, both at the same time as hard as ever he could. Then he took some wet moss and wrapped it around the hot can, so it wouldn’t burn his paws, and he tossed everything—hot water, hot stones, hot can and all—over into the pond, close to where the alligator was. Then Sammie blew on the whistles some more. “Toot! Toot! Toot! Toot!”
“Splash!” Into the water went the hot stones, hissing like snakes.
“Buzz! Bubble! Fizz!” went the hot water all over the alligator.
“Toot! Toot!” went the whistles which Sammie was blowing.
“Skizz! Skizz!” went the hot fire-ashes that also fell into the pond.