Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/232

 and-yellow gators had no guide save unerring instinct.

Automatically, that one of them who was afterwards to be king of the river took command. He was fully nine inches long, longer by an inch than any of the others, and doubtless it was his superior size and strength that put him in the van as the strange procession started for the lagoon. So it fell to him to break a path through the lush weeds and stiff grasses, and when at last he reached a small shallow cove of the little woods lake he was too weary to swim on to the broader reaches beyond.

He lay at the surface of the still wine-brown water, in the midst of his brothers and sisters, basking in the warm sunshine, despite his weariness deliciously content; and as he lay thus, indolently enjoying his first taste of life, death came out of the rank reeds along the shore of the cove and struck right and left, claiming a victim at each stroke. For the tall white-and-black wood ibis who had been standing motionless as a statue at the edge of the water, his long bill resting on his chest, the arrival of the gator family was an unexpected piece of luck, and he was quick to take advantage of it.

A wise old bird was this long-legged, long-necked ibis. He moved not a muscle or a feather as he watched the little saurians come down through the narrow fringe of short marsh. Only when the last