Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/244

 Again and again, in spite of his cunning, death all but had him. Once he was hooked—caught on a set line baited with a dead gallinule suspended six inches above the water with a big shark hook imbedded in its carcass. Fortunately for him, a section of old rope, with which the line had been pieced out, was too rotten to withstand his struggles. He was never hooked again—the one lesson was enough.

Gunners were more dangerous foes. He carried much lead in his body, some of it in his head, for he had been wounded at least a dozen times, and three of these wounds were serious; but the gator, though more vulnerable than is commonly supposed, is exceedingly tenacious of life, and the bigger he is the harder it is to kill him. Because, in common with all his kind, he slept all winter in a secret den extending far back under the river bank, the river king was out of harm's way during the greater part of the period when human hunters were numerous in his domain; for when once summer had come to the Low Country, not many white men cared to brave the almost intolerable heat of the fresh-water rivers and lagoons. A few negro fishermen were even then abroad, but he had learned that these were not so greatly to be feared. They seldom took their rusty single-barreled shotguns with them when they went fishing, and they were not often tempted to