I says, “I hope the moon don’t never rise.”

I lays down and goes to sleep again. Directly I wakes up, and here the east was done turned red, the moon a half hour high, and day a-breaking.

“Wake up, Nub,” I says. “Here ’tis daylight and the moon done rose.”

He says, “We’ll pull a haul regardless.”

We sets out in the launch close to shore in shallow water.

I says, “You jump off; I’ll hold the land stake.”

We lays the seine.

Now, how come the alligator in the pocket, it was thisaway. When one of them fishermen made a haul he’d do it easy and a alligator’d swim out of the net and sell out through them cypress timbers. Them as knowed this partickler ’gator told me he’d of swum out if he’d had the chance. But I didn’t know no better and we worked too fast for him. He didn’t get off at the right place.

I ties up the haul, and when the time comes, here I am, pulling away. We had the fish, all right, but directly the net commenced a-banging.

I says, “Nub, I’m tearing all the webbing loose from the lead line. The net’s hung up on a log.”

He says, “Next time it hangs, leave me see it.”

“All right. It’s hung.”

He looks.

“ ’Tain’t nothing.”

I says, “Listen, Nub, there’s a alligator in this net.”

He says, “Yeah, but he’s a little one. He won’t hurt you.”

I says, “Are you sure he’s a little one?”

I was inside the circle and I had to pull it my way. I had to hold fast on the lead line to keep from losing the fish. The circle got right small.

Directly Nub says, “Wait, Fred.”

I says, “Nub, you ain’t lied to me?”

Now, we’d done had a couple of snorts, but not enough to where I wanted to catch no alligator.

I says, “Nub, I’m as close to what’s in that net as I aim to be. Now, if that ’gator catches you, don’t never say a alligator caught you and I goed off and left you. I’m just telling you ahead of time—I’m gone now. I hate to leave you, but I’m gone.”

He says, “Come back here with your pistol.”

I says, “I’ll come a foot closer.”

I untied the launch from a cypress tree. I pulls up on the lead line. I shot the .38 where I figured the ’gator belonged to be.

Nub says, “You got him.”

All right. I pulls up the seine. I knowed I’d killed him. You ever fished a seine? Well, you have to fish the pocket out. We fished out the pocket.

I says, “Where’d that alligator go?”

About that time something comes up between us.

I says, “Nub, the first man moves is the first man caught!”

That alligator’s head was three feet long. He was bopping his lips, and when they was wide open you could of put a yardstick between ’em. His mouth come together. Nub catches his lips.