Polly's Southern Cruise

by Lillian Elizabeth Roy

The three resumed their difficult progress farther into the swamp, and then without notice Jack lifted his rifle, aimed, and an explosion echoed throughout the place. A great shower of chips and bark rewarded this exploit, and the guide laughed good-naturedly.

“Him sure dead log!” remarked he to Jack’s discomfiture.

Finally they halted again and the guide silently pointed to a smaller heap of scum quite close to what looked like a great tree-trunk fallen over into the water. Both boys aimed and shot at what they believed to be a small alligator, and then to their great amazement the huge log scuttled away, while the small child of the immense mother followed in her wake leaving a streak of crimson in the stream to tell the hunters they had missed killing him.

“We go in here, sit down and watch. Mebbe big ’gator come by.” Thus saying the guide started for a screened spot in the marsh and posted his followers upon a log which gave them a good view of the surrounding area. He sat upon the lower end of the tree.

Jack looked carefully around, and Ray watched a spot that made him think a submerged alligator might rise up and offer him a good target. Jack spied a vast depression in the mud bank near his right hand, and the guide nodded.

At the moment of Jack’s distraction and the guide’s nod, Ray pulled the trigger of his gun and the shot found a true result of that aim. A tiny alligator came to the surface, half-turned over in the coating of green, and gasped. At the same time a maddened splashing came through the green marsh-grass near the dying infant ’gator, and soon an enormous head with snapping jaws thrust itself from the water.

The half-crazed mother used her snout to tenderly go over the quivering body of her child, and when she found it had breathed its last she lifted the mud-crusted head and gazed balefully around.

“Queeck! Queeck—shoot!” commanded the guide, taking swift aim and firing a load at the reptile. But his shot missed because the alligator was thrashing too wildly across the water and making for the hunters.

Not ten yards separated the three men who were doomed if they did not climb out of the reach of those sinister jaws with their double rows of long white teeth. Her eyes showed what the alligator meant to do to the murderers of her child, and the very twisting and lightning-like advance of the huge thing sent a shiver of dread along the spines of the two young hunters.

Again the rifle of the guide cracked, and in another moment the guns of the two Americans sent forth their spurts of red and the yellow streaks of death right into the opened jaws of the monster. Still she came on and lifted her vast opened jaw within a foot of Jack’s leg. The lashing tail of the alligator was the only thing which told she had been shot and was suffering.