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Show AOlGMmAS AOATING COMPANION Sportsmen Have Exciting Experience With One That Had Audy Been Killed Several Times, Boat and boatman were capsized As my rifle had fortunately been left upon the bank. I was able to kill .the alligator again, We secured him by floating the boat, under him and then bailing it out. The alligator complete-ly complete-ly filled the boat, so that my companion compan-ion and I sat upon, his back as we, , paddled down the river with gunwales unpleasantly near the water. It was growing dark and the water around us was becoming live with alligators. alli-gators. While we were reflecting upon our overloaded condition, our al-ligator al-ligator came to life aagin and shifted ballast until water poured over tie gunwale. We quickly balanced the boat, only to see it again disturbed and to ship more water. A scramble for the shore followed, which we reached without capsizing and where we left -our victim for the night after again ' killing him. In the morning our bus-, zard friend from the Homosassa river, surrounded by his family, 1 was sitting; above him in the tree waiting for us to attend to our carving duties. There are drawbacks to' hunting In the Great Cypress swamp. Even na lives have been lost and died in its recesses. re-cesses. It is bounded on the east by the Everglades and on the west by a series of impenetrable mangrove thickets, alternating with deep channels. chan-nels. If lost one should turn his face firmly to the north, and as a guide remarked re-marked to me "he ought to get somewhere some-where in three or four days." Country-Life Country-Life in America. Alligators move rapidly under water, are hard to see, harder to hit, and the harpoon will penetrate only the least accessible portions of the body. Nor does the title to the hide necessarily pass with making fast the weapon. One afternoon in the Cheesehowitz-kee Cheesehowitz-kee river I harpooned a large alligator alliga-tor which towed me up and down the stream for an hour or two and then sulked in its deepest part. I pulled on the line until the boat was directly over him and stirred him up with the harpoon pole. He rolled himself up on the line in the manner peculiar to sharks and alligators, and banged the boat suggestively. We rowed to- the bank and, making fast to some bushes, hauled on the line until we succeeded in worrying him nearly to the boat, when he rose to the surface and attacked at-tacked us with open mouth. We repelled re-pelled the attack with harpoon pole and rifle. The former was promptly bitten in three pieces, but the latter apparently finished him. It was so nearly dark that we decided to carry him in the skiff a mile down the river to where our sloop was anchored. We broke the seats out of the boat, and together managed to lift the head of the alligator aboard and tie it. We then tied the other end, when the reptile rep-tile came to life and landed a blow with his tail which lifted me out of the skiff into the saw grass, with the breath knocked out of my body, and my hand and face badly cut by the grass. |