presence of our boat and ourselves, and instead of bowing his
head at once to drink, as had evidently been his first intention, he
stood motionless as a statue, gazing wonderingly at us. He was a superb
creature, standing as high at the shoulders as a cow, with a smooth,
glossy hide of a very light chocolate colour--except along the belly and
on the inner side of the thighs, where the hair was milk-white--and
long, sharp, gracefully curving horns. We were so close to him that we
could even distinguish the greenish lambent gleam of his eyes.

Mr Austin very cautiously reached out his hand for a musket which lay
on the thwart beside him, and had almost grasped it, when--in the
millionth part of a second, as it seemed to me, so rapid was it--there
was a flashing swirl of water directly in front of the deer, and before
the startled creature had time to make so much as a single movement to
save itself, an immense alligator had seized it by a foreleg and was
tug-tugging at it in an endeavour to drag it into deep water. The deer,
however, though taken by surprise and at a disadvantage, was evidently
determined not to yield without a struggle, and, lowering his head, he
made lunge after lunge at his antagonist with the long, sharply-pointed
horns which had so excited my admiration, holding bravely back with his
three disengaged legs the while.

"Give way, men," shouted Mr Austin in a voice which made the leafy
archway ring again. "Steer straight for the crocodile, Tom; plump the
boat right on him; and, bow-oar, lay in and stand by to prod the fellow
with your boat-hook. Drive it into him under the arm-pit if you can;
that, I believe, is his most vulnerable part."

Animated by the first lieutenant's evident excitement, the men dashed
their oars into the water, and, with a tug which made the stout ash
staves buckle like fishing-rods, sent the boat forward with a rush.

The alligator--or crocodile, whichever he happened to be--was, however,
in the meantime, getting the best of the struggle, dragging the antelope
steadily ahead into deeper water every instant, in spite of the
beautiful creature's desperate resistance. We were only a few seconds
in reaching the scene of the conflict, yet during that brief period the
buck had been dragged forward until the water was up to his belly.

"Hold water! back hard of all!" cried Mr Austin, standing up in the
stern-sheets, musket in hand, as we ranged up alongside the frantic
deer.