“She was hanging by her hands alone. I swung up my feet, got a good purchase by crooking my knee, and so, freeing one arm, hauled her up by the waist beside me.
“Fortunately, she was an active woman, and she kept her presence of mind. I shouted to her to unfasten the shoulder-shawl she wore, and to fasten it over the rope and around her waist. She had done it in less time than it takes to tell of it, but as she did it my heart jumped into my mouth. Our combined weights amounted to more than the rope had been stayed up to bear. The poles to which it was lashed at each end slanted. We dipped till, owing to the height of the flood, we swung a bare six inches above the surface! And, of course, I had a very good idea of what had upset the boat!
“I had not to wait long. There was a boil of the eddies not ten yards away and the familiar dun snout lifted and showed the upper half of an open jaw. The brute made a bee-line for the bait that hung so attractively at his mercy.
“Señora Barenna’s shriek was piercing. As for me—well, I spoke before of the sudden way in which an impulse masters one. I saw in an instant that it was a case of two or one, and a sort of frenzy of rage seized upon me. With a curse I flung myself down upon the brute’s head, feeling with my thumbs for his eyes, while, released from my weight, the rope jerked the señora up six feet into safety.
“The next few seconds were a sort of disconnected nightmare. The water closed over my head, the great jaws worked beneath my hands, and then a blow struck me on the chest, exactly over the book that I had placed in my breast-pocket a minute or two before.
“At times like those one’s reason is not in the very best working order, but even then I was quite capable of recognizing that the blow could not have been dealt by an alligator’s clumsy limbs. And my legs and feet, too, instead of meeting the resistance of the brute’s back, were sprawled along nothing more solid than a twenty-foot pole!
“My hand gripped my revolver from my belt, searched with it aimlessly downward and sideways, and blundered against what I felt to be a living body. At the same time the blow was repeated, but not quite in the same place. The point of an edged weapon slipped across the smooth cover of the book and gashed into my ribs. At that I pulled the trigger!
“And many a time since have I thanked Providence for the man that invented brass-drawn, water-tight cartridges. For as I fired there was a great bubbling rush from the explosion that rocked me over, while the huge head below me heaved violently. Like a leaping salmon it burst with me above the surface!
“The flood caught us, gripped us, and whirled us away together, to fling us up upon a shallow bank of mud. And as I struggled to my feet I looked down upon Concepcion’s dead body, a wound gaping in it from my bullet, while beside him was stranded a great sheet-iron shell, floated with leathern bags and surmounted with the stuffed head of old Joaquin! Behind it stretched a pole ornamented with the tip of the same animal’s tail!
“Well, gentlemen, I don’t know that there is much more to add. After I had climbed along the rope and dragged Señora Barenna into safety I kicked open the door of the bungalow and left her there, while I hurried up to the works for help. But before I sent old Emil and his housekeeper down with cordials, and so forth, I got the old man’s permission to knock the hands off at once. I had my reasons.