"Look!" she gasped, pointing to two long, black objects stretched right across the narrow place. "Alligators! Two big ones!"
It was only too true. The girls' way back was blocked.
CHAPTER XVIII
BETWEEN TWO PERILS
"What—what are we going to do?" gasped Grace. She, as Betty said afterward, seemed always to be the first to ask questions that were hard to answer in an emergency. "They—they may attack us!"
"Why can't you say something less—less scary?" demanded Mollie who, after the first gasp of fright, had come forward to stand beside Betty. Amy had already shrunk to a place in the rear near Grace. It seemed to be always thus, with Betty and Mollie facing the immediate danger, and Grace and Amy needing protection.
Not that they were not brave when occasion demanded it. They would not have been outdoor girls else, but somehow the first fear of something menacing sent Amy and Grace scurrying to the rear, whence it needed considerable persuasion to bring them to the van again.
"They—they don't seem to see us," ventured Amy, after a few tense seconds, during which the four had stared at the alligators.
"They won't see you and Grace at all, if you stay behind us," said Mollie a bit sharply. "There's no present danger, as far as I can see. Why don't you come out and help Betty and me throw stones at them?"