Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/243

 and the deep swamps of the Low Country, it was seldom now that any member of that race lived long enough to attain a length of twelve feet. Soon or late, buckshot or rifle bullet found a vital spot; and it was only the great cunning of the king of the river—and perhaps the good luck that had seemed to attend him from the start—that kept him safe for so long.

Man was now the only foe that he feared; but so intense was his fear of man that it was the ruling passion of his life, shaping and directing all his activities. The selection of his basking places on the shore and of his dens under the river banks and the old ricefield dams, his comings and goings, his hunting expeditions and forays—all these depended upon and were governed by the degree of mandanger involved. Yet now and again he hit back at his dreaded foeman. He became an adept at hog stealing, skillfully stalking the half-wild woods hogs where they came down to wallow in the mud, seizing them in his huge jaws or knocking them senseless with his powerful tail. Several times man had provided him with even choicer meat—small 'possum dogs and coon dogs from the negro cabins; and once a fine imported setter, ignorant of the dangers lurking in the Low Country waters in the warm season, found her way into his insatiable maw.