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 him. He remembered a morning months ago when he had seen a dog trail a marsh rabbit along the low narrow dike toward which the pack seemed now to be heading. His periscope eyes began to slide across the surface of the water. At the outer edge of the thick carpet of water growths bordering the dike the eyes vanished. A minute later the gigantic head of the river king was thrust upward through the telanthera carpet near its inner margin.

A moment the huge head remained motionless, a dreadful apparition, incredibly sinister, the enormous jaws gaping slightly revealing long, conical, pointed teeth. An exultant burst of melody, louder than ever, rang out on the myrtle-grown peninsula a quarter of a mile away. With a surge and heave the monstrous black body of the giant saurian, trailing long weeds from the spines and ridges of its armor, reared itself out of the water and mounted the bank.

Sandy Jim Mayfield, alert and watchful behind the bushy willow in the upper backwater, jerked his rifle to his shoulder as he saw the vast bulk of the king of the river appear on the dike within fairly easy range. It was the opportunity for which the old woodsman had been waiting all winter, yet he let it pass. Like a flash his quick mind foresaw the