“Looks like a cocoanut palm there by the pool at the foot of the falls. If it is, I know where I get my supper.”
It was indeed a cocoanut palm, a low one, standing not more than ten feet from the ground, but bearing cocoanuts all the same. He had not descended half way before he could count them. There were many green ones and three that were brown and ripe.
“Um-yum-yum!” he smacked his lips as he seemed to feel the rich white milk go gurgling down his throat.
He was still looking at that tree and trying to figure out how he could best reach it, when he suddenly discovered that he was all but at the bottom.
He had given no thought to what that landing might be like. He glanced downward, then with hands that trembled so he could scarcely open and close them he made desperate efforts to climb back.
Had he dropped another foot he must surely have fallen into the jaws of a mammoth alligator. The beast was asleep with his mouth wide open. Grinning terribly, his yellow tusks looking like rows of sharpened spikes, he lay there quite motionless. What would have been the consequences had the boy dropped that remaining foot? Would the alligator have tumbled in great fright into the water? Would his terrible jaws have closed like the iron gates of a prison? Who can tell? Who would care to perform the experiment that he might know?
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime Pant had not been idle. Good old Hardgrave, a plain man from Arkansas with the courage of a knight and heart of a king, had arrived. He had anchored his motor-boat with its wheezy engine close to the creek landing, then had unloaded his cargo of chemicals, retorts, toy balloons and cheesecloth.
“Where’s Johnny?” he asked the moment he stepped on land.
“Just what I was going to tell you.”