Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/249

 beneath him, sending out on either side long waves that rustled and whispered along the reedy margins. A gray fox, walking the cypress-shaded dike between the lagoon and the abandoned ricefields, quickened his pace as a saurian charged straight for the dike and, rearing his gigantic dripping body out of the water, waddled awkwardly yet with surprising speed along the gator crawl and into the deep canal beyond. A lithe snake-bodied mink, about to swim the canal near the gap where it emptied into the river, heard a sound as of a swiftly moving boat, and, hiding amid the reeds, watched the river king race past along the narrow waterway.

In the river tide was ebbing. The wounded saurian, still swimming with frenzied energy, swung downstream with the current. The setting sun turned the rippling water to bronze, which changed to silver when the moon came up above the forest on the eastern bank; and in that ghostly, glimmering radiance a negro, crossing the river in his little bateau after a visit to his sweetheart's cabin, was suddenly aware of a monstrous black beast of the waters rushing down upon him. Groaning with superstitious terror, the man hid his face in his hands, and the bateau pitched and rocked as the monster surged past not five feet from the square bow. Miles farther down, well below the point