ly get Ned to help before he
could tie it. Tom didn't approve of the new member of the family,
but he made no trouble while the camp was awake. The alligator
became very restless at night and got in the habit of thrashing
around almost constantly. In the morning his tail was seen to be raw
and bleeding and day by day it grew worse. Tom was suspected, but
always denied having had anything to do with it, with an expression
of such injured innocence when accused that Dick had to believe him.
One night, however, a heavy blow was heard, accompanied by a yowl
from Tom and followed by some sort of scrimmage. In the morning Tom
had a mussed-up look and the reptile had a number of fresh wounds.
As the camp was moved that day and Ned continued to object to taking
an alligator in the canoe the reptile was turned loose. He walked
with dignity out on the prairie until he was near the slough, when
he scuttled hastily to the water and plunged in.

[Illustration: "THE BARB CAUGHT IN THE REPTILE'S LOWER JAW"]

The new camp was in a little glade on a creek which the explorers
had followed for about three miles west from the Everglades. They
paddled through the creek till it melted in the meadows; they poled
their canoe along the channel which the grass concealed; they
dragged it by hand under bushes which covered it, until the little
glade opened to them and showed enough dry ground for a camp and
several shallow streams winding around clumps of bushes, but always
stretching out toward the west. At daylight the young explorers were
again on the move, dragging the canoe along twisting streams not
deep enough to float it, until they struck a larger stream in a
heavier growth. The little streams disappeared, the water grew
deeper, but the jungle became worse, and every yard of their path
had to be carved out with their knives.

"This doesn't look very hopeful," said Dick as they stopped the
heavy work for a few minutes' rest. "Hadn't we better go back a ways
and hunt up a more open trail?"

"Not on your life," replied Ned. "We are on the right track and
we've got to fight it through. The only thing I'll stop for is a
mangrove swamp, and I'll try mighty hard to get around that. But we
won't find any mangrove swamp to trouble us."

"You seem to know just what we're going to find on this trail, if
you call it a trail."

"I know what we ought to find, and that's better."

"Why is it better?"

"Because then we'll know if we're on the