"Let's tell 'em we're in a hurry," suggested Betty, as she caught up a stone. Running forward she threw it with such good aim that it struck one of the saurians on the head. With a sort of surprised grunt the creature slid off the narrow neck of sand into the water. The other followed with a splash.
"There they go!" cried Mollie. "Come on now, before they take a notion to come back. Oh girls! I'm nearly starved!"
Betty laughed at this—it was characteristic of Mollie, once the immediate stress was removed, to revert to the matter that had previously claimed her attention, and this had been their luncheon.
"Come on!" she cried, and ran toward the main shore.
Betty said afterward that they had never run so fast, not even at the school games, where the outdoor girls had made records for themselves on the cinder track. Just who reached shore first is a matter of no moment—in fact it must have been a "dead heat," as Tom Osborne said afterward.
As the girls passed the place where the alligators had been sunning themselves they gave one look each into the water where the saurians had disappeared. One look only, and they did not pause to do that. But they saw no signs of the ugly creatures.
"Safe!" cried Betty, and the girls, breathless from their run, were safe. They gathered about the eatables on the grass.
"Oh, where can Tom be?" cried Betty anxiously. "I—I hope nothing has happened to him!"
"Now who is making direful suggestions, I'd like to know?" asked Grace.
"Well, it is queer to have him disappear that way," voiced Mollie. "But I'm going to be impolite and—eat."