VIII 



AN ALLIGATOR HUNT 



ONE of the obiter facta of a holiday in Florida was, 

 so a friend at home assured me, a hunt for alli- 

 gators, for which purpose he advised me to take 

 one of my rifles, preferably a sporting Winchester, 

 in my kit. I did so. The rifle was all but left on 

 board the Cunarder at New York (I devoutly wish 

 that it had been), it involved me in a tedious 

 business with the Customs at Havana, and, with- 

 out firing a single shot throughout my trip, its 

 ultimate fate was to figure in a fancy-dress ball on 

 board the Tagus coming home. Had it been in 

 my boat in the Pass on the day of the big shark, 

 the whole of its magazine might perhaps have been 

 emptied to some purpose into that shagreen hide, 

 but at that moment it reposed unloaded in a corner 

 of my room at Useppa. 



One windy day, with the Pass quarantined for 

 fishing, we got up an impromptu alligator hunt on 

 the island of La Costa. The moving spirits in a 

 drama that proved to be Hamlet without the 

 Prince were " Johnny Jack," the Useppa taxider- 

 mist, and my guide, Underbill, who has, on his 

 native island of Sanabel, acquired a nose for an 

 alligator that does him credit. Underbill declared 

 that he knew of an immense 'gator on La Costa, 

 not far from a landing that we could easily reach 

 in Jack's launch, the Naturalist ; so, late one after- 



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