In this way they floated into a round open pool which the mist had concealed from view. Ted had no sooner sighted several dark floating objects a short distance ahead than the water about him became curiously agitated, and, with a cry of alarm, he glanced back at Hubert.
"Jump on the log!" he shouted. "We're in a 'gator hole."
Neither boy could afterward have told how he did it, but almost in a twinkling both stood upright on the log, maintaining a precarious balance by dipping their long sticks in the water, first on one side and then on the other. Under their combined weight the log sank so low that it was almost entirely submerged, and this added to the alarm of both when they saw that the pool seemed to be alive with alligators large and small, for a hundred feet around. Some of the huge scaly saurians swam about rather lazily, while others lay quiet on the water and gazed at the intruders with their black, lusterless eyes. As yet they exhibited no signs of either fear or anger, and even seemed lacking in curiosity.
But it was Hubert's first experience with the alligator of Florida and southern Georgia, which, in his ignorance, he associated with the crocodile of the far East, and the boy was terrified.
"They are going to eat us up!" he gasped, after he had tottered, swayed, and very nearly lost his balance beyond recovery.
"I don't think they'll do anything to us, if we are careful not to run into them," said Ted, reassuringly, though not without some real apprehension of trouble.
But this is precisely what happened. Hubert's desperate struggles to regain his balance caused the log to depart from the course Ted was trying to maintain, and, before it could be prevented, they floated between two motionless alligators, almost touching them, and then the forward end of the log ran aground on the back of a third.
There followed a great stir and splashing. Hubert went overboard with the first shock, and the powerful flirt of a frightened or enraged alligator's tail sent Ted, slightly stunned, into the water three or four feet from the log.
Both boys swam desperately back to their one refuge, conscious of the plunging of the excited amphibians as they did so, and fearing every moment that an arm or a leg would be bitten off. But when they again stood upright on their log, balancing themselves once more with the long sticks to which they had persisted in clinging, they saw with some measure of relief that the nearest of the alligators now visible were some yards distant. In their stupid astonishment or lazy indifference, the creatures had allowed an easy prey to escape them.
With all possible speed, yet cautiously, the boys paddled their log away from the undesirable neighborhood, breathing more freely only after they were out of the pool and well on their way through the sedge toward the "house."