t made the lagoons
their home.

Not a shot then had been fired, and as they wandered in and out they
found plenty to take their attention. Every here and there Chicory
found for them some nest in amongst the reeds--the nursery of duck or
crane. But the most interesting thing that they saw in the shape of
nests was that of a kind of sociable grossbeak, a flock of which had
built a town in a large tree, quite a hundred nests being together in
common; while in another tree, whose branches drooped over the water,
there were suspended dozens of a curiously woven bottle-shaped nest,
with its entrance below, to keep the young birds from the attack of
snakes.

"What's that noise?" said Jack, suddenly, as he was on about a quarter
of a mile ahead with his brother, Mr Rogers being busily transferring
some water-beetles to Chicory's spirit-bottle, which escaped breaking
after all from the toughness of the wire.

"I don't know," replied Dick. "It sounds like some animal. And there's
a scuffling noise as well.

"It's just like a cow moaning, a very long way off. I wonder what it
is?"

"I don't think it's a long way off. It seems to me to be pretty close."

They moved about among the reeds and bushes, but could see nothing.

"I know what it is," said Jack, laughing. "It's some kind of big frog
or toad: they live in such marshy places as this, and they croak and
make noises that seem to be ever so far-off, when they are close by."

"Oh! Look, Jack! Oh, poor thing!" cried his brother.

"Where? Where?"

"Over yonder, across the water."

Jack caught sight of the objects that had taken his brother's attention,
and for a few moments the boys seemed passive spectators of the horrible
scene.

Across the lagoon, and some fifty yards away, a beautiful antelope, with
gracefully curved spiral horns, had apparently come out of the bushes to
drink, at a point of land running a little way into the lake, when it
had been seized by a hideous-looking crocodile. The monster's
teeth-armed jaws had closed upon the unfortunate antelope's muzzle, and
a furious struggle was going on, during which, as it uttered its piteous
feeble lowing noise, something between the cry of a calf and a sheep,
the crocodile, whose tail was in the water on the side of the point
farthest from where the spectators stood, was striving to drag its prey
into the lagoon.

The antelope made a brave struggle, but the tremendous grip of the
reptile and its