“Jim,” said he, turning to his brother, “that carcass is swollen enough to float like a cork.”
“Let’s try it then,” said he, brightening up; “the other alligators are asleep, and it’s the best hour out of the twenty-four.”
Inspired by the new thought, they ran to the bloated mass and made the attempt to get it into the water. It was an exhausting task, and they could not have moved it far, but by great labor they succeeded in swinging it into the current. It proved to be wonderfully buoyant, and when the boys perched themselves upon the back their combined weight did not sink it more than half under water.
Their hearts throbbed fast when they found themselves at last floating with the current. They were not without dread that the scent of the carcass would bring others to the spot, but the voyage of the singular boat was so quiet that the siesta of the other alligators was not disturbed. They floated down stream until, at a bend in the river, they swung so close to land that they saw the water was shallow; and springing off they waded ashore.
Jim and Joe discovered nothing of their dugout, and were obliged to make their way down to the St. John’s, where they were fortunate enough to hail a passing steamer, which landed them near their home.
- Transcriber’s Notes:
- Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
- Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author intended.
- Typographical errors were silently corrected.
- Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.