Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/248

 thing more than a frenzy of terror and pain. The bullet which had entered his skull and temporarily paralyzed his body seemed now to have paralyzed instinct also. To the right of him, to the left and ahead the water spouted in little jets as the rifle bullets struck, but the great saurian did not submerge. Like a submarine with half its deck awash, he raced on at full speed, while the night herons, startled by the fusillade, flapped and croaked above him.

A bullet ripped a furrow in the armor of his back, but even this did not send him down to the depths where he would have found safety. Yet, if the instinct that should have kept him under water was dead for a time, he seemed to know even in his madness where he was going. Sometimes a gator, suddenly recovering consciousness after an almost fatal shot, charges aimlessly about at the surface, swimming frantically in circles or even driving himself up on the bank. But the king of the river, in that wild race, somehow held a straight course. Halfway down the cove, another bullet seared his back; but when at last he reached the end of the cove and, turning into the main lagoon, swung broadside to the gunner, the range was too great for any save a master rifleman.

An osprey, circling above the lower reaches of the lagoon, saw a huge black shape go surging by