"Pepe, get your lasso--rope him--rope him! Hurry! he's slipping!" yelled George.
Pepe snatched up his lariat, and, without waiting to coil it, cast the loop. He caught one of the flippers and hauled tight on it just as the crocodile slipped out of sight off the muddy ledge. The others ran to the boat, and, grasping hold of the lasso with Pepe, squared away and began to pull. Plain it was that the crocodile was not coming up so easily. They could not budge him.
"Hang on, boys!" Ken shouted. "It's a tug-of-war."
The lasso was suddenly jerked out with a kind of twang. Crash! went Pepe and Hal into the bottom of the boat. Ken went sprawling into the mud, and George, who had the last hold, went to his knees, but valiantly clung to the slipping rope. Bounding up, Ken grasped it from him and wound it round the sharp nose of the bowsprit.
"Get in--hustle!" he called, falling aboard. "You're always saying it's coming to us. Here's where!"
George had hardly got into the boat when the crocodile pulled it off shore, and away it went, sailing down-stream.
"Whoop! All aboard for Panuco!" yelled Hal.
"Now, Pepe, you don't need to row any more--we've a water-horse," Ken added.
But Pepe did not enter into the spirit of the occasion. He kept calling on the saints and crying, "Mucho malo." George and Ken and Hal, however, were hilarious. They had not yet had experience enough to know crocodiles.
Faster and faster they went. The water began to surge away from the bow and leave a gurgling wake behind the stern. Soon the boat reached the middle of the river where the water was deepest, and the lasso went almost straight down.