Now he was rounding a sharp curve in the bayou, and the breeze was more squarely in his face than ever. That was good. No scent of him could blow forward to reach any 'gator that might have surfaced on the starlit stretch ahead. Two was all he hoped for tonight, and then he would head back. Quietly he shipped his oar and adjusted a small electric torch on a band around his forehead. Then with its pencil-point of light sweeping the bayou ahead of him, again he started paddling. Even more silently, this time, so that there was no drip from the blade as he skillfully raised it, no least murmur of splash as he brought it forward and dipped it again. An alligator, lying quiet with only a tip of nose and eyes at the surface, is more alert, more ready to scurry away than a mouse. There was in Nixon's mind nothing but intentness to see the two little pin-points of fire in the bayou surface, two among the many that were reflected stars, yet he would see the difference, the spacing, a little greener, more glowing fire which would mark them as the eyes of a drowsing 'gator. He was thinking only that he would get two as soon as he could and get back to Ralph. That would make ten altogether this moon--ten salted skins, enough to be worth a trip to the market in Pensacola. * * * * * What he did not know was that in the shadows of the bayou bank up ahead strange little shapes were cautiously moving. Living things that did not belong here; that had never been here before. The night sounds of the lush woods were blended into a voice which Nixon had heard all his life, so that now he was never aware that he was hearing it. A 'gator would hear it too--the slither of a rattler; the flip of a fish or a water moccasin; a marsh-hen croaking; or an owl's hoot--and the steady blend of the voices of a million million insects. And that was all that could be heard, for the strange dark little shapes, along the bank at the next bend, moved very cautiously, quite soundlessly--little things moving upright. They were only a few inches tall. Once they stood in a group as though communicating. One of them carried a tiny light, but its glow was less than a firefly's. Now Nixon saw, out in the center of this stretch of the bayou, the two green dots that were a 'gator's eyes, and his face relaxed a little with the flicker of a smile of satisfaction. His light swept the water, reached the eyes and clung, so that the stupid 'gator just lay there and stared, with the light dazzling him. His brain, not much bigger than a pea buried in the pulpy mass within his big flat head, held no thought of danger. The twin reptile-eyes were perhaps fifty yards away when Nixon first saw them. Now he paddled more slowly, with the rowboat gliding forward soundless as a floating leaf. The grip of his right hand down by the blade of the oar-paddle tightened.