ready put
the baskets of lunch. Somehow or other Betty naturally fell into step
beside Tom. She looked up at him frankly and said:

"Mr. Hammond told us your last name, but I have forgotten it, I'm
ashamed to say."

"It's Osborne. But I'd rather you'd call me Tom, if you don't mind.
Everyone does around here--that is, all my friends, of course," he added
quickly.

"Then we'd like to be your friends," said Betty with a smile, and a calm
look at Mollie, who was making signs behind Tom's back. Obvious signs
they were, too. Betty looked triumphant, as though saying: "There,
didn't I tell you?"

Tom Osborne proved that he knew something about motor boats, and was
also versed in the ways of making girls comfortable. He asked if they
wanted him to steer, and as Betty had not taken her craft down the river
very often she agreed. The girls sat on the after deck, under a
wide-spread awning, and chatted of the sights they saw.

They emerged into Lake Chad, skirted its shores and swept into the river
beyond. They passed several other power craft and one or two houseboats
in which were gay parties.

At the suggestion of Tom, they decided to go up a little side stream to
where he said was a pleasant place to eat lunch, and this they reached
about noon.

"Now, if you girls want to walk about and see what there is to be seen,"
he told them, "I'll get out the victuals and set the table on the grass
under that tree," and he indicated it. "I'll call you when I'm ready."

Betty and her chums assented, and Tom proceeded to set out the luncheon.
The girls strolled on for some distance, and Mollie, attracted by some
flowers on the end of a small spit of land, extending for some distance
into the stream, walked toward them, the others following.

They picked many blossoms, and were watching a pair of large turtles
when Amy, glancing toward the main land, which was reached by crossing
a narrow neck of sand, uttered a cry of alarm.

"Look!" she gasped, pointing to two long, black objects stretched right
across the narrow place. "Alligators! Two big ones!"

It was only too true. The girls' way back was blocked.

CHAPTER XVIII

BETWEEN TWO PERILS

"What--what are we going to do?" gasped Grace. She, as Betty said
afterward, seemed always to be the first to ask questions that were hard
to answer in an emergency. "They--they may attack us!"

"Why can't you say something less--less scary?" demanded Mollie who,
after the fir