A DISASTER. 



383 



enemigos de los Christianos, by which they mean ene- 

 mies of mankind. In a canoe it would have been un- 

 pleasant to disturb them, but in the bungo we brought 

 out our guns and made indiscriminate war. One mon- 

 ster, twenty-five or thirty feet long, lay on the arm of a 

 gigantic tree which projected forty or fifty feet, the 

 lower part covered with water, but the whole of the 

 alligator was visible. I hit him just under the white 

 line ; he fell off, and with a tremendous convulsion, 

 reddening the water with a circle of blood, turned over 

 on his back, dead. A boatman and one of the Peten 

 lads got into a canoe to bring him alongside. The ca- 

 noe was small and tottering, and had not proceeded 

 fifty yards before it dipped, filled, upset, and threw 

 them both into the water. At that moment there were 

 perhaps twenty alligators in sight on the banks and 

 swimming in different parts of the river. We could do 

 nothing for the man and boy, and the old bungo, which 

 before hardly moved, seemed to start forward purpose- 

 ly to leave them to their fate. Every moment the dis- 

 tance between us and them increased, and on board all 

 was confusion ; the patron cried out in agony to the se- 

 nores, and the senores, straining every nerve, turned the 

 old bungo in to the bank, and got the masts foul of the 

 branches of the trees, which held her fast. In the mean 

 time our friends in the water were not idle. The Pe- 

 ten lad struck out vigorously toward the shore, and we 

 saw him seize the branch of a tree which projected fifty 

 feet over the water, so low as to be within reach, haul 

 himself up like a monkey, and run along it to the shore. 

 The marinero, having the canoe to himself, turned her 

 bottom upward, got astride, and paddled down with his 

 hands. Both got safely on board, and, apprehension 

 over, the affair was considered a good joke. 



