142 MARTIN RATTLER.

succeeded in becoming the link of communication
between the two.

For many weeks they continued to descend the
river; paddling energetically when the stream was
sluggish, and resting comfortably when the stream
was strong, and sometimes dragging their canoe over
rocks and sand-banks to avoid rapids—-passing many
villages and plantations of the natives by the way—
till at last they swept out upon the bosom of the
ereat Amazon river.

The very first thing they saw upon entering it was
an enormous alligator, fully eighteen feet long, sound
asleep on a mud-bank.

“Och! put ashore, ye Naygur,” cried Barney,
seizing his pistol and rising up in the bow of the
canoe. The old man complied quickly, for his spirit
was high and easily roused.

“Look out now, Martin, an’ hould back the dog for
fear he wakes him up,” said Barney, in a hoarse
whisper, as he stepped ashore and hastened stealthily
towards the sleeping monster, catching up a handful
of gravel as he went and ramming it down the barrel
of his pistol. It was a wonderful pistol that—an Irish
one by birth, and absolutely incapable of bursting, else
assuredly it would have gone, as its owner said, to

“smithereens” long ago.