The bright globules flew around their heads, and rolled down their glittering tresses, as from the pinions of a swan; while their clear laughter rang out at intervals, as one or the other appeared victorious.
A hoarse voice drew my attention from this interesting spectacle.
Looking whence it came, my eye rested upon a huge negress stretched under a cocoa-tree, who had raised herself on one arm, and was laughing at the contest.
It was her voice, then, I had mistaken for that of a man! Becoming sensible of my intrusive position, I turned to retreat, when a shrill cry reached me from the pond.
The swans, with a frightened energy shrieked and flapped over the surface, the gold-fish shot to and fro like sunbeams, and leaped out of the water, quivering and terrified, and the birds on all sides screamed and chattered.
I sprang forward to ascertain the cause of this strange commotion.

My eye fell upon the negress, who had risen, and, running out upon the parapet with uplifted arms, shouted in terrified accents: "_Valgame Dios--ninas! El cayman! el cayman_!" I looked across to the other side of the pond.

A fearful object met my eyes--the cayman of Mexico! The hideous monster was slowly crawling over the low wall, dragging his lengthened body from a bed of aquatic plants.
Already his short fore-arms, squamy and corrugated, rested upon the inner edge of the parapet, his shoulders projecting as if in the act to spring! His scale-covered back, with its long serrated ridge, glittered with a slippery moistness; and his eyes, usually dull, gleamed fierce and lurid from their prominent sockets.
I had brought with me a light rifle.

It was but the work of a moment to unsling and level it.

The sharp crack followed, and the ball impinged between the monster's eyes, glancing harmlessly from his hard skull as though it had been a plate of steel.