e sticky
ooze, and, recovering, plunge headlong up the bank with his line.

A cry of helpless apprehension burst from the brigantine's company as
one of those suspicious logs stirred into reptilian life. A great,
warty snout jutted upwards, with a swift half-turn towards the intruder,
and the yellow water was swept into a furious whirlpool as the saurian
secured leverage to turn by a convulsion of his powerful tail.

The cry rose to a shout of warning, and with the shout Barry sprang
below to his cabin. He returned on the run with a big-game rifle in time
to hear a ripple of relief run from end to end of the ship; and his eyes
opened wide with astonishment when he saw the cause.

Other muddy logs had come to life on the foreshore and Little's attitude
would have been ludicrous but for the terrible risk he ran. He stared at
the suddenly awakened monsters as the sexton of a church might stare if
one of his gargoyles suddenly spoke to him. But there was no fear in his
bearing; simply the natural wonder of a man faced by a situation which,
more than likely, he had disbelieved the possibility of until that
moment.

He had kept tight hold of his line, and as Barry watched, he gathered up
the slack and with a whoop jumped nimbly over the back of the nearest
alligator, charging now with open jaws. As he landed on his feet, he
dodged behind a root, and his clear cry rang over the water.

"The big rope, Barry, quick! I can dodge these big lizards. It's a
cinch!"

The mate bent on the hawser, and men picked up great coils of it and
flung them overboard. Barry stood silent, dumbfounded, and watched
Little haul in his line, only pausing from time to time to pass from one
side of the tree to the other, as the alligators closed in on him. The
eye-end of the hawser splashed up the shoal water, was wrapped securely,
but in sorry landsman's fashion, about the big roots, and in response to
a howl of triumph from the shore, Barry sang out:

"After capstan here! Get a strain on the line, Mr. Rolfe!" And while the
dripping rope crawled in through the fair-lead, cracking and twanging to
the strain of the ship's arrested drift, he stood at the rail, rifle in
hand, and muttered:

"He's a comic-opera sailor, all right; but Lordy! what a man he'll make
with his feet on dry earth! Let go my anchor, hey? By Godfrey, he can
let go the forestay when we're going about, and I'll forgive him after
this."

The ship's stern answered to the stea