As darkness began to descend upon the vast waste of waters, it occurred to me to make a bold dash through the serried ranks of our besiegers, but Yamba restrained me, telling me it meant certain death to attempt to run the gantlet under such fearsome circumstances.
Night came on.

How can I describe its horrors?
Even as I write, I seem to hear the ceaseless roars of those horrible creatures, and the weird but gentle lappings of the limitless waste that extended as far as the eye could reach.

Often I was tempted to give up in despair, feeling that there was no hope whatever for us.

Towards morning, however, the alligators apparently got on the scent of some floating carcasses brought down by the floods, and one and all left us.

Some little time after the last ugly head had gone under, the catamaran was sweeping swiftly and noiselessly down the stream again.
We made straight for a little island some distance ahead of us, and found it uninhabited.