his flank, where the hide was less tough, the long claws penetrated deeply, so deeply that they could not be withdrawn. Once the eagle screamed—a farewell, perhaps, to the wide skies and the lonely swamp woods and the river lotus fields and marshes which he had known for nearly fifty years; but whether or not in that instant he realized his fate, he fought fiercely and bravely to wrench himself free as the terror-stricken young gator raced for the deeper water. For ten yards or so the river bottom shelved gradually, and for that distance the proud white head and the laboring wings remained above the surface. Then suddenly they vanished.
The years passed, and year by year the king of the river grew in length and bulk and cunning. A time came when he was king in fact, lord of all the river wild folk and afraid of no wild creature of the waters, the woods, or the air. Of monstrous girth and stretching fully fourteen feet from nose to tail tip, he was the greatest gator that the river had seen in half a century—a dragonlike monarch of the waters, rivaling those mighty saurians of the old days that lived out their allotted span because their armor was proof against the red man's weapons. That time had long gone by. Though the saurian race still abounded in the beautiful winding rivers
