"I think I will start to make my paper chain now," he said to himself when he had been sitting there a little while. "Then I won't have to do it at home, and Jumpo and I can go for a little ride in our auto."
So he cut the black paper into strips, and made rings of them, fastening them together, one inside the other, until he had a nice long chain.
"Ha! That is very fine!" thought the monkey boy. "I will have it all done when Jumpo comes back."
He was holding up the chain by the end, to see how long it was, when, all of a sudden he heard a noise in the bushes. At first he thought it was his brother, coming with the yeast cake, but, somehow it didn't sound like the green monkey. It was a crashing-bashing-rashing-smashing sort of a noise, and Jacko began to be afraid, thinking it might be the burglar fox.
And then, before he could stand up and sing a song about four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a rice pudding, out from the bushes came the savage skillery-scalery alligator with the double jointed tail. Oh, but that alligator was savage! And how he glared at Jacko with his mean, green eyes. Then the bad creature smacked his jaws together like an automobile running over a pair of roller skates.
"Ah, ha!" cried the alligator. "At last I have a monkey for supper. I would like two—a red one and a green one—but as long as there is only a red one I'll eat him."
"Are you really going to eat me?" asked Jacko, dropping the paper chain and the paste and the scissors. He was real scared.
"I am," said the alligator, "and if your brother was here I'd eat him also."
Then Jacko was glad his brother hadn't come back. Nearer and nearer came the alligator, with his mouth wide open. And, oh! how frightened Jacko was. He didn't know what to do.
"Please, Mr. Alligator, don't eat me!" he cried.