y, that must be the direction of the little river," he thought; "and
instead of following the horrible brute here have I run away; and now
how am I to find the way that it pointed out? That's soon done," he
said, as he thought of the broken and crushed-down canes which must mark
the alligator's track; and he began at once to search for what proved to
be absent. There were bruised and trampled growths which he sprang at
directly, but his reason soon pointed to the fact that they had not been
made by the huge lizard he had started from its lurking place where it
had crawled ashore to watch for the approach of prey, but by himself in
his flight, and though he tried over the swampy ground again and again,
it was only to grow more confused, and at last he stopped short, baffled
and enraged against himself.

"Oh!" he ejaculated, as he raised one foot to stamp it down heavily upon
the earth, with the result that he drove it through a soft crust of
tangled growth and sent up a gush of muddy, evil-smelling water, and
then had to drag his shoe out with a loud sucking sound, while the foot
he had not stamped was beginning to sink. "It's enough to drive any one
mad," he muttered. "Just as I am entrusted with something important I
go and muddle it all, and the more I try the worse the hobble grows."

He took a few steps to his right, to where the earth beneath him felt
firmer, and listened, but the floundering and scuffling of the alligator
had ceased, and he looked in vain for the traces of its passage.

"Think of it," he said, half aloud; "I trod on the brute, and it dashed
off, frightened to death, to make for the river; and then what did I
do?--Turned round and ran away as if the brute was coming after me with
its jaws opened wide ready to take me down at a mouthful! Alligators
are not crocodiles. Here, I'm a brave fellow, upon my word! I'm
getting proud of myself, and no mistake!"

He stood and listened as he looked around and tried to pierce the dense
growth, but in vain, for all was thick vegetation, and eye and ear were
exercised in vain.

There was a soft, dull, half croaking sound here and there at a distance
which suggested the existence of frogs, and from the trees whose
clustering leaves overhead turned the brake into a soft twilight, he now
and then heard the twittering of some bird. But he could see nothing,
and for a few minutes he began to give way to a feeling of despair.

"I daren't shout," he thought