and Old Man Moccasin could have swallowed me
like a pill and enjoyed the operation.

"Well, one day I was showing off more than usual and had paddled out
farther toward the Drifts, saying to the others that I was going to pay
a call on Old Man Moccasin. I kept on farther than I intended, for it
was a nice summer day and the water felt good. I didn't know how far I
had gone until I turned around to look, and then I didn't think about
that any more, for a quarter of a mile away, and between me and the
shore, was Old Man Moccasin, coming straight in my direction. He was a
good two feet out of the water and had on his far-sighted glasses, and I
knew he was after me. He was coming, too. He was swimming with a wide,
wavy motion, and making a little curl of white foam in front, and
leaving a long trail behind.

"I was so scared, at first, that I couldn't do anything. Then I thought
I'd better dive, but I knew that Old Man Moccasin could swim faster
under the water than on top of it, and see just as well. I began to
paddle for dear life toward the other side of the Wide Blue Water, which
was a long way off, with Old Man Moccasin gaining fast. I knew he was
bound to overtake me before I got across, and I was getting weaker every
minute, from being so scared and trying so hard, and I could hear Old
Man Moccasin's steady swimming noise coming closer all the time.

[Illustration: OLD MAN MOCCASIN WAS ONLY ABOUT TWENTY FEET AWAY]

"Of course it wasn't very long until I gave up. I was too worn out to
swim another stroke. Old Man Moccasin was only about twenty feet away,
and when I looked back at him over my shoulder I saw that he was smiling
because he was so sure he had me. It was an awful smile, and I don't
like to remember it often, even now, and that was ever so long ago, as
much as three hundred and fourteen or fifteen years, this spring.

"Well, when I saw Old Man Moccasin at that close distance, and smiling
in that glad way, and his spectacles shining, because he was so pleased
at the prospect, I said to myself, I'm gone now, for certain, unless
something happens right off; though, of course, I didn't see how
anything _could_ happen, placed as I was. But just as I said those
words, something did happen--and about the last thing I would have
expected. The first I saw was a big shadow, and the first I heard was a
kind of swish in the air, and the first I knew I wasn't in the water any
more, but was on the way to the sky with