k
I'll leave you plenty to eat and drink and find my way to the coast.
I can do it in a day, and have your old friend, who don't believe we
know a manatee from a tarpon, up here with his boat the next day
sure."

"Don't do it, Neddy. I'd be thinking of a hundred things happening
to you, and the night would be pretty lonesome without even Tom."

Ned started away from the river through a wooded swamp, and before
he had gone a quarter of a mile struck a prairie on which several
deer were feeding. The animals seemed to know that he had no weapon,
for they showed no alarm until he had walked some distance toward
them. There were a number of small ponds near him, and as Ned
approached the nearest one a small alligator slipped from the bank
into the water. The boy had provided himself with a short, heavy
pole, and he waded fearlessly in after the 'gator; but although the
pond was not thirty feet across and he explored every foot of it, he
could not find the reptile. He finally came across an opening in the
bank, in which he thrust his pole, when it was promptly seized by
the alligator. Ned tried to pull the reptile within reach, but when
the head came out of the cave it was larger than he had looked for,
and before he had made up his mind to tackle it the creature had let
go of the pole and gone back in his cave. Then the boy got earnest
and determined to have that alligator if he had to crawl into the
cave after him. He sharpened a bit of branch that stuck out beside
the big end of his pole like the barb of a harpoon, and again thrust
it in the cave. Soon he had the reptile fighting mad with his head
out of the cave, when he pushed the pole into his open mouth, and
catching the barb in the soft skin under the alligator's jaw, just
as Dick had done weeks before, hauled him out of the cave and
dragged him out on the bank. When a few yards from the pond the
reptile broke loose from the barb and started back for the pond.
Ned was after him like a tiger and struck two or three smashing
blows on the creature's head with his pole, and then, as the reptile
neared the water, threw himself on its back and seizing its jaws
held them together while he turned the brute on its back. At first
the alligator lashed out with its tail, but soon became quiet; and
then Ned got out his knife and severed the spine of the reptile.

The water of the pond was so nearly fresh that its taste was only
slightly sweetish, and after Ned had drank all he