The sensitive Tom resented Dick’s neglect, and was seen sitting on the after end of the cabin, in front of the wheel, making friends with the captain.  Every few minutes Tom put out a paw and rested it on the captain’s hand as it rolled the wheel.  Then Tom would look up in his face, and finally rubbed his cheek on the captain’s hand, and after that became his shadow.  That night Tom abandoned his sleeping place beside Dick’s bunk and turned in with the captain.  Dick was a little annoyed at first, but his conscience told him that he had neglected Tom, and had himself to blame.

When the anchor was dropped, the Irene rested in a solid mass of lily pads, with her bowsprit extending over the border of the Everglades, which stretched out eastward, a great, grassy, overflowed meadow, dotted with keys, to the horizon.  A slough of clear water, deep enough to float the little power-boat, zigzagged out into the Glades, and the captain, with Mr. Barstow, Molly and Dick in the craft, followed it for more than a mile.  There was water enough over the light grass of the Glades to float the skiff, which Ned poled through a carpet of white pond-lilies, that here and there covered the surface.  Many little grassy mounds showed where an alligator had his cave.  From one of them an alligator slid out and started across the Glades at full speed.  Ned was soon on his trail, poling like mad.  He was nearly up to the reptile when it swung around and darted away at right angles to its former course, gaining many yards on its pursuer, for the grass prevented the quick turning of the skiff.  Time after time the reptile repeated this dodge, time after time the boy was near enough to have touched the alligator with a pole, but always he dodged, until Ned was too exhausted to follow the creature any farther.

“Oh, I wish you could have caught it,” said Molly when Ned returned.

“We’ll get one to-morrow sure,” said Dick, while Ned’s only comment was: 

“Don’t you get Dick to try fool things, sis.”

“Captain,” said Dick that evening, “I want an alligator, and if you will help Ned pole in the skiff in the morning until we are near enough to one, I’ll either put a rope over his head or go overboard and grab him.”

“Don’t try that on these ’gators; but I’ll rig up a harpoon for you, and if you can hit one with that there won’t be any trouble in getting him.”

“I don’t want to kill the thing with a harpoon.”

“I’ll fix that.  I’ll stop down the harpoon so you can’t drive it more than an inch beyond the hide, and the ’gator will never know he’s hurt.  He’ll think a fly lit on him.”

In the morning, as they were about to start on the ’gator chase, Ned said to his father: 

“This is our third day and our last chance, so we have got to keep busy.”

“Not quite,” replied Mr. Barstow.  “You and Dick have done so well that you can stay in command until I have to call you down.”