The next crocodile was not far away and the hunters saw it crawl into its cave.  Dick stood on the bank over the cave and arranged the noose on the end of the harpoon line around the mouth of the cave, while Ned paddled the canoe a few rods down the stream.  Dick had the line fast to his wrist, but Ned wouldn’t punch it until it had been made fast to a chunk of wood instead.

“What difference does it make?” grumbled Dick.  “If the chunk goes overboard I follow it.  See?”

Ned hit the crocodile on his first poke and Dick had his hands full from the start.  He would have been dragged into the river within a dozen seconds, but for Ned’s coming to his aid.  The crocodile was as quick as the alligators had been slow.

“If he digs round as fast on land as he does in the water there’s goin’ to be a circus when we get him out on the bank,” said the panting Dick.

“And you wanted to be tied to his mammy by the wrist.  This is only an infant.  It isn’t nine feet long.”

But it was, and a foot over that, yet when they got the reptile on the bank and drew its head close to a sapling, they tied a piece of the line around its knobby head without any trouble.  From that moment the crocodile was tame, and soon Dick was handling him fearlessly, although Ned warned him that if he didn’t keep out of the way of that tail he’d be knocked endways.  But Dick sat on his back, pulled his tail and tried to lift him on his own back without the crocodile showing displeasure in any way.

“Ned, this thing is a peach.  Why not send him to your father?  He could be taken to New York in a baby carriage or led like a puppy dog.  There would be no such trouble as there would be with a manatee.  He’s a curiosity, too.”

“If it was the big one I believe it would be worth trying.  That fellow must be as big as they come.  I wish we had fixed for him.”

“It isn’t too late.  Let’s lay for him to-morrow.”

The crocodile hunters camped beside their captive and Dick spent the afternoon trying to educate it.  He talked of taking the string off of its jaws, but Ned stopped that.

“I’m afraid he might eat the wrong thing, by mistake, and then I’d have to go home alone.  I suppose I could take the crocodile along in your place.  Your mother might like him as a kind of souvenir.”

“But see how gentle he is and how mild his eye.  He doesn’t whack around with his tail like an alligator and I think he likes to have me sit on his back.”

“That’s only his slyness.  Look at him now.”  For the crocodile, thinking itself unobserved, was crawling slowly toward the bank of the river.  When it reached the end of its tether and could go no farther, it lay down and, lifting its head, looked all around as innocently as if it never dreamed of escaping, but had just moved a little way to get a better view of the scenery.

Every hour or two of the next day the boys called at the cave of the big crocodile, but never found him in.