oals, the reptiles turned
and scrambled back into the river, evidently alarmed at this, to them,
strange phenomenon.

"I should not care about bathing here, Davis," Harry Parkhurst remarked
to the old sailor.

"You are right, sir; I would rather have a stand up fight with the
Malays than trust myself for two minutes in this muddy water. Why, they
are worse than sharks, sir; a shark does hoist his fin as a signal that
he is cruising about, but these chaps come sneaking along underneath the
water, and the first you know about them is that they have got you by
the leg."

"Which is the worse, Davis, a bite from an alligator or a shark?"

"Well, as far as the bite goes, Mr. Parkhurst, the shark is the worst.
He will take your leg off, or a big 'un will bite a man in two halves.
The alligator don't go to work that way: he gets hold of your leg, and
no doubt he mangles it a bit; but he don't bite right through the bone;
he just takes hold of you and drags you down to the bottom of the river,
and keeps you there until you are drowned; then he polishes you off at
his leisure."

"The brutes!" Harry exclaimed, with deep emphasis. "See, the first
lieutenant has hit that big fellow there in the eye or the soft skin
behind the leg; anyhow, he has got it hard; look how he is roaring and
lashing his tail."

"What is the best way of killing them?" Dick asked.

"I have heard, sir, that in Africa the natives bait a big hook with a
lump of pork, or something of that sort; then, when an alligator has
swallowed it, they haul him up, holus bolus. I should say a good plan
to kill them would be with 'tricity. The last ship I was in, we had an
officer of the Marine Artillery who knew about such things, and he put
a big cartridge into a lump of pork, with two wires, and as soon as the
shark had swallowed it he would touch a spring or something, and there
would be an explosion. There was not as much fun in it as having a hook,
but it was quicker, and he did not do it for sport, but because he hated
the sharks. I heard say that he had had a young brother killed by one
of them. He would sit there on the taffrail for hours on the lookout
for them, with three or four loaded lumps of pork. Why, I have known him
kill as many as a dozen in a day. I expect the best part of his pay must
have gone in dynamite.

"He had a narrow escape one day; somehow the thing went wrong, and in
trying to set it right he fell over the taffrail. The shark had bolt