ught, but it was only another difficulty in the
way of one who had mastered his natural dread and determined in his
peril to make a brave fight.

"It's no more an alligator's element than the land is," thought the lad.
"The brute's amphibious, and I don't believe it will turn upon me
unless I stick my dirk into it; and I don't care, I'll risk it, if I die
for it. I don't believe they're so tough as people say."

Then a more staggering thought assailed him, and this time, instead of
forcing his way through the tangle and dragging his feet out of the
swampy soil, he stopped short. For the hope that had sustained him
suddenly sank away. He had been feeling sure that the guide he feared
to a great extent was after all leading him towards the little river,
and that once he reached the bank he would know by the current, however
sluggish, the way down to the boat; but now the terrible thought
attacked him that the reptile might after all have its dwelling-place in
some swampy lagoon such as he had read was common in the islands and the
Southern States.

"It's of no _use_," he said to himself, as he stopped short, panting and
exhausted; "this can't be the right way. There's no clear river down
which a fellow could wade or swim; this is one of those dreadful
swamps--dismal swamps, don't they call them?--and the farther I go the
worse off I shall be. Oh, where's my pluck? Where it ought to be," he
said, answering himself; and he struggled on again, for he had awakened
to the fact that the rustling and splash made by the reptile was dying
out.

Rustling and splash, for now he awoke plainly enough to the fact that he
was sinking ankle deep at every step, and he roused himself fully once
more.

"Giving up," he panted, "just when I had won the day! Hurrah! There's
the river!" And making a tremendous effort he struggled on, for there
was the alligator floundering through mud and water now where the growth
was getting more open, and at the end of some dozen yards there was
light--golden-looking light--coming down from above. Then there was a
loud flopping, followed by a heavy splash, and the lad snatched at and
seized the boughs that closed him in, and just saved himself from
following the reptile he pursued by clinging with hands and legs to a
stout cypress, to which he held on as he indistinctly made out the
sobbing sound of the wave that the reptile had raised as it plunged into
what seemed to be the edge of a swampy