whose home was beside a creek some miles below. Into the home of the
little colony One-Ear went swinging a little later, demanding to see the
head man of the fishing village, and there ensued an earnest conversation
of short sentences, but one which caused immediate commotion. To the hill
dwellers the rare advent of a sea-serpent was comparatively a small
matter, but it was a serious thing to the Shell folk. The sea-serpent
might come up the creek and be among them at any moment, ravaging their
community. The Shell people were grateful for the warning, but there were
few of them at home, and less than a dozen could be mustered to go with
One-Ear to the rendezvous.

They were too late, the hardy people who came up to assail the serpent,
because the serpent had not waited for them. The two boys roosting in the
treetop on the height had beheld what was not pleasant to look upon, for
they had seen a yearling of the aurochs enveloped by the thing, which
whipped down suddenly from the branches, and the crushed quadruped had
been swallowed in the serpent's way. But the dinner which might suffice
it for weeks had not, in all entirety, the effect upon it which would
follow the swallowing of a wild deer by its degenerate descendants of the
Amazonian or Indian forests.

The serpent did not lie a listless mass, helplessly digesting the product
of the tragedy upon the spot of its occurrence, but crawled away slowly
through the reeds, and instinctively to the water, into which it slid
with scarce a splash, and then went drifting lazily away upon the current
toward the sea. It had been years since one of these big water serpents
had invaded the river at such a distance from its mouth and never came
another up so far. There were causes promoting rapidly the extinction of
their dreadful kind.