water turned and ceased. And my companion scowled. The noise of a distant rifle-shot came like the muffled noise of a pop-gun, and then a green-black snout lifted itself above the water in midstream a few yards to our right. Behind the snout a long black body appeared, only partly submerged, and I made out the head and tail of an alligator. Slowly it drifted towards the mud patch on which we were waiting. Presently a long snout and a mud-encrusted head reached out of the water and rested on the bank, and our gruesome enemy was within easy reach of our guns. Not fifteen yards divided us. His little eyelids flickered like those of a nervous lizard, and his sinister jaws were open just wide enough to show the long line of white teeth. I brought my rifle round very slowly, and fired from where I sat. The alligator twisted with the swiftness of a cat and dived. I stood still and waited. The troubled water showed that he had been hit; I could mark the direction of his flight by the fury of his struggle. Once he lifted himself half out of the stream, and I fired again. The result was a mad plunge towards the shore on which we stood. I started back, but ere the beast found land, the water swirled again, and I knew that he had turned aside. I followed him with my eyes, and in midstream saw him churning the water with his tail and then plunging round in circles; then he dived to the right, and I saw him no more. “Him gone now,” said my guide. “You should have waited until him come right up to the shore.” I relit my pipe, and we retraced our steps. In the fever swamps of Jamaica there are a few alligators, but I fear that most of the sport of the place is to be found in the imagination of the sportsmen and the tales of the native guides. Danger there is, but that is the danger of the sun and the risk of fever; and in daring these things there is little sport. So we tramped back again and regained the sweet-scented water of the bay. We waded to the boat, and the sensation of the clear sea-water washing clean our sun-dried, muddy bodies gave us a few moments of ecstasy. But we could not linger for fear of the dread cousin of the alligator, the West Indian shark. We swam aboard, and hoisted our sail, and sailed homewards. The boat was bare of awning, and the strong, pitiless sun completed its burning work, so well begun in the swamp lands. The charred barrel had exhausted its cargo of tepid water, and there was no food. But the few hours’ sail was not unpleasant. We were enveloped in the sweet breezes of God’s fair ocean, and soothed by the fresh sea-scent. There were no miasmic exhalations, and no clouds of winged insects. The mosquito was gone, and our scorched eyes might now be closed or held half opened towards the cool breeze. [Illustration: A FRUIT-SELLER, BARBADOES] COMMERCIAL JAMAICA CHAPTER XIX COMMERCIAL JAMAICA