"No," answered the rabbit, "I'm not a good swimmer, but I'll wait here
on the bank for you."

"Then you may hold my whistle as well as your own," said Bawly, "for I
might lose it under water." Then into the pond Bawly hopped, and was
soon swimming about like a fish.

But something is going to happen, just as I expected it would, and I'll
tell you all about it, as I promised.

All of a sudden, as Bawly was swimming about, that bad old skillery,
scalery alligator, who had escaped from a circus, reared his ugly head
up from the pond, where he had been sleeping, and grabbed poor Bawly in
his claws.

"Oh, let me go!" cried the boy frog. "Please let me go!"

"No, I'll not!" answered the alligator savagely. "I had you and your
brother once before, and you got away, but you shan't get loose this
time. I'm going to take you to my deep, dark, dismal den, and then we'll
have supper together."

Well, Bawly begged and pleaded, but it was of no use. That alligator
simply would not let him go, but held him tightly in his claws, and made
ugly faces at him, just like the masks on Hallowe'en night.

All this while Sammie Littletail sat on the bank of the pond, too
frightened, at the sight of the alligator, to hop away. He was afraid
the savage creature might, at any moment, spring out and grab him also,
and the rabbit boy just sat there, not knowing what to do.

"I wish I could save Bawly," thought Sammie, "but how can I? I can't
fight a big alligator, and if I throw stones at him it will only make
him more angry. Oh, if only there was a fireman or a policeman in the
woods, I'd tell him, and he'd hit the alligator, and make him go away.
But there isn't a policeman or a fireman here!"

Then the alligator started to swim away with poor Bawly, to take him off
to his deep, dark, dismal den, when, all of a sudden, Sammie happened to
think of the two willow whistles he had--his own and Bawly's.

"I wonder if I could scare the alligator with them, and make him let
Bawly go?" Sammie thought. Then he made up a plan. He crept softly to
one side, and he hid behind a stump. Then he took the two whistles and
he put them into his mouth.

Next, the rabbit boy gathered up a whole lot of little stones in a pile.
And the next thing he did was to build a little fire out of dry sticks.
Then he hunted up an old tin can that had once held baked beans, but
which now didn't have anything in it.

"Oh, I'll make that alligator wish he'd never caugh