Mrs. Norton seemed rooted to the spot.  But she turned to Wargrave with outstretched arms and gasped: 

“Save me, Frank!  Save me!”

With a bound he reached her, and, as she clung to him convulsively, panted out: 

“It’s all right, dear.  You’re safe now.”

He pushed her behind him, and bringing the rifle to his shoulder, faced the crocodile.  The brute opened and shut its great jaws, seeming to gasp for air, while a strange whistling sound came from its throat.  Its body appeared to be paralysed.

“It can’t move.  You’ve broken its spine,” cried Raymond, as he reached them.  “Your first shot it must have been.  Look!  Your second’s torn its throat.”

He pointed to the neck and went round to the other side.  From a jagged, gaping wound where the expanding bullet had torn the throat, the blood spurted and air whistled out with a shrill sound.

Wargrave turned to Violet and took the terrified woman, who seemed on the point of fainting, in his arms.

“All right, little girl.  It’s all right.  The brute’s done for.”

She pulled herself together with an effort and looked nervously at the crocodile.  Then she released herself from Frank’s clasp and said, smiling feebly: 

“What a coward I am!  I’m ashamed of myself.  Where’s John?  Oh, here he is.  Doesn’t he look funny?”

The Resident, very red-faced and out of breath, had slowed down into a shambling walk and was puffing and blowing like a grampus.  As he came up to them he spluttered: 

“Is it safe?  Is it dead?”

“It’s harmless now, sir,” answered Raymond.  “It’s still living but it can’t move.  The spine’s broken, I think.”

The Resident turned to his wife.  The poor man had been in agony while she was in danger; but now that the peril had passed he could only express his relief in irritable scolding: 

“How could you be so foolish, Violet?” he asked crossly.  “The idea of going to sleep near the tank!  Most unwise!  You might have been eaten alive.”

His wife smiled bitterly and glanced at the grumbling man with a contemptuous expression on her face.

“Yes, John, very inconsiderate of me, I daresay.  But how was I to know that there was a mugger (crocodile) in the tank?”

Then for the first time she realised the nearness of the water.

“Good gracious!  I thought I was much farther—­how did I get so close to it?  Did I slip down in my sleep?”

“No; there are the trees,” said Raymond.  “It’s extraordinary.  The whole tank seems to have shifted.”

The Resident was mopping his bald scalp and lifted his hat to let the gusty wind cool his head.  A sudden squall blew the big pith sun-helmet out of his hand.  Wargrave caught it in the air and returned it to its owner.

“By Jove! it’s a regular gale,” he said.  “I think I know what’s happened.  This wind’s so strong that it’s blown the water of the tank before it and actually shifted the whole mass thirty or forty yards this way.”