are in it with them. Anyhow, I'm going
to find out."

Dick took the oar that was used to pole the canoe and wading
straight toward the nest struck it a blow that most fortunately
knocked it to the water, while a second blow sent it under the
surface. A few of the outlying insects stung the boy and he had a
dozen little lumps to show for a day or two, but he had captured the
fort and drowned the garrison and the canoe passed in peace.

The creek emptied into a wide bay on the high bank of which the boys
camped. It was part of the Madeira Hammock, the most beautiful
native forest they had seen. At daylight a large crocodile was
floating on the bay near the camp, but sank out of sight as the
campers showed themselves. From the bay the canoeists entered a deep
river with high banks on which were growing madeira, wild sapadillo,
palms of several kinds and other varieties of trees. In the sides
of the high banks at the water line the boys saw holes which they
believed to be the caves of crocodiles. In the mouth of one the
water was muddied and Dick cut a long pole which he poked into the
hole. At first he felt something seize the pole, but could not
afterward find the creature. He then took the pole on the bank and
thrust it into the ground where he thought the reptile was most
likely to be. When he had worked thirty feet back from the bank he
felt something move and the next instant Ned, who had stayed in the
canoe at the mouth of the cave, was nearly capsized by the rush of a
great beast nearly the size of the canoe.

"Why didn't you grab it, Ned? What is the use of my driving game to
you, if you let it slip through your fingers?"

"Perhaps you think that was one of the alligator babies you've been
nursing. You didn't see the big head with the tusks running out of
the top of it."

"No, but I mean to see the next one. It'll be your turn to do the
punching while I rope the critter."

"If you had got your rope on that one and held on, you'd be in his
cave now, inside the owner's tummy."

The next crocodile was not far away and the hunters saw it crawl
into its cave. Dick stood on the bank over the cave and arranged the
noose on the end of the harpoon line around the mouth of the cave,
while Ned paddled the canoe a few rods down the stream. Dick had the
line fast to his wrist, but Ned wouldn't punch it until it had been
made fast to a chunk of wood instead.

"What difference does it make?" grumbled Dick. "If the chun