“Oh, perhaps I shall be too late! She screams in agony; she is already in the grasp of the alligator?”
A dozen bounds carried me clear of the grove; and, gliding along the embankment of the turtle-crawl, I stood by the edge of the tank. A fearful tableau was before me.
My sister was near the centre of the basin, swimming towards the edge. There stood the quadroon—knee deep—screeching and flinging her arms frantically in the air. Beyond, appeared the gigantic lizard; his whole body, arms, hands, and claws clearly traceable in the pellucid water, above the surface of which rose the scaly serrature of his back and shoulders. His snout and tail projected still higher; and with the latter he was lashing the water into white froth, that already mottled the surface of the pond. He was not ten feet from his intended victim. His gaunt jaws almost touched the green baize skirt that floated train-like behind her. At any moment, he might have darted forward and seized her.
My sister was swimming with all her might. She was a capital swimmer; but what could it avail? Her bathing-dress was impeding her; but what mattered that? The alligator might have seized her at any moment; with a single effort, could have caught her, and yet he had not made it.
I wondered why he had not; I wondered that he still held back. I wonder to this hour, for it is not yet explained. I can account for it only on one supposition: that he felt that his victim was perfectly within his power; and as the cat cajoles with the mouse, so was he indulging in the plenitude of his tyrant strength.
These observations were made in a single second of time—while I was cocking my rifle.
I aimed, and fired. There were but two places where the shot could have proved fatal—the eye or behind the forearm. I aimed for the eye. I hit the shoulder; but from that hard corrugated skin, my bullet glinted as from a granite rock. Among the rhomboid protuberances it made a whitish score, and that was all.
The play of the monster was brought to a termination. The shot appeared to have given him pain. At all events, it roused him to more earnest action, and perhaps impelled him to the final spring. He made it the instant after.
Lashing the water with his broad tail—as if to gain impetus—he darted forward; his huge jaw hinged vertically upward, till the red throat showed wide agape; and the next moment the floating skirt—and oh! the limbs of my sister, were in his horrid gripe!
I plunged in, and swam towards them. The gun I still carried in my grasp. It hindered me. I dropped it to the bottom, and swam on.