tly the sand bar was a sort of feeding
place for them, and though they might disappear for the moment at some
disturbance, they returned.

Hopelessly the girls looked at one another. Then they glanced into the
water, that seemed fairly swarming with the snakes. There appeared to be
more than ever of them. Then Amy looked toward the neck of land and gave
a cry of surprise--of joy.

"Look!" she exclaimed. "They're going--the alligators. At least
they're--moving!"

"I hope they don't move toward us!" gasped Grace.

The saurians indeed seemed waked into life. Whether they had completed
their sun bath, or whether the call of their appetites moved them, it
was impossible to say. But they were walking about, dragging their
ponderous, fat, squatty bodies, and their big tails.

"Let's tell 'em we're in a hurry," suggested Betty, as she caught up a
stone. Running forward she threw it with such good aim that it struck
one of the saurians on the head. With a sort of surprised grunt the
creature slid off the narrow neck of sand into the water. The other
followed with a splash.

"There they go!" cried Mollie. "Come on now, before they take a notion
to come back. Oh girls! I'm nearly starved!"

Betty laughed at this--it was characteristic of Mollie, once the
immediate stress was removed, to revert to the matter that had
previously claimed her attention, and this had been their luncheon.

"Come on!" she cried, and ran toward the main shore.

Betty said afterward that they had never run so fast, not even at the
school games, where the outdoor girls had made records for themselves on
the cinder track. Just who reached shore first is a matter of no
moment--in fact it must have been a "dead heat," as Tom Osborne said
afterward.

As the girls passed the place where the alligators had been sunning
themselves they gave one look each into the water where the saurians had
disappeared. One look only, and they did not pause to do that. But they
saw no signs of the ugly creatures.

"Safe!" cried Betty, and the girls, breathless from their run, were
safe. They gathered about the eatables on the grass.

"Oh, where can Tom be?" cried Betty anxiously. "I--I hope nothing has
happened to him!"

"Now who is making direful suggestions, I'd like to know?" asked Grace.

"Well, it is queer to have him disappear that way," voiced Mollie. "But
I'm going to be impolite and--eat."

She approached the "table," an example followed by the others.