Part 15 (1/2)

”There, you see now,” broke in Fritz, ”if we only had my gun along, Eben here could be a real sentry, and hold a feller up in the right way.

Watch this second slippery log here, boys. You c'n easy enough push anybody into the slush if he gets gay, and refuses to give the pa.s.sword.”

Then he in turn also followed after Paul, leaving the bugler and Noodles there, congratulating themselves that they could be doing their full duty by the enterprise without taking any more desperate risks.

And then when the six scouts had gone about fifty feet Eben was heard wildly shouting after them.

”Paul, O! Paul!” he was bellowing at the top of his voice.

”Well, what is it?” asked the scoutmaster.

”You forgot something,” came the answer.

”What?”

”You didn't give us the pa.s.sword, you know; and how c'n we tell whether any fellers has it right, when we don't even know.”

Paul just turned and walked on, laughing to himself; and those who followed in his footsteps were shaking with inward amus.e.m.e.nt. Either Eben had taken the bait, and gorged the hook, or else he was having a little fun with them, no one knew which.

However, all of them soon realized that Paul had done a clever thing when he thus coaxed the two clumsy members of the patrol to drop out of line, and allow those better fitted for coping with the difficulties of the slippery path to go forward; because it steadily grew worse instead of better, and neither Eben nor Noodles could have long continued.

Why, even Fritz began to feel timid about pursuing such a treacherous course, and presently he sought information.

”Don't you think we must be nearly in the heart of the old bog, Paul?

Seems to me we've come a long ways, and when you think that we've got to go back over the same nasty track again, perhaps carrying a wounded man, whew! however we are going to do it, beats me.”

Paul stopped long enough to give a tree a couple of quick upward and downward strokes with that handy little tool of his, and then glance at the resulting gash, as though he wanted to make sure that it could be seen a decent distance off.

”Well, that's a pretty hard question to answer,” he replied, slowly. ”In the first place, we don't know whether the man fell into the heart of the Black Water, or over by the other side. Fact is, we haven't come on anything up to now to settle the matter whether he fell at all.”

”Great governor! that _would_ be a joke on us now, wouldn't it, if we made our way all over this beastly place, when there wasn't any aeronaut to help? We'd feel like a bunch of sillies, that's right!” burst out Fritz.

”But we acted in good faith,” Paul went on to say, positively. ”We weighed the matter, and arrived at the conclusion that he had fallen somewhere in here; and we agreed, _all of us_, mind you, Fritz, that it was our duty to make a hunt for Mr. Anderson. And we're here on the ground, doing our level best.”

”Ain't got another word to say, Paul,” Fritz observed, hastily, ”you know best; only I sure hope it don't get any worse than we find it right now. I never did like soft slimy mud. Nearly got smothered in it once, when I was only a kid, and somehow it seems to give me the creeps every time I duck my leg in. But go right along; only if you hear me sing out, stop long enough to give me a pull.”

”We're all bound to help each other, don't forget that, Fritz,” said Seth. ”It might just as well be me that'll take a slide, and go squash into that awful mess on the right, or on the left. Don't know whether to swim, or wade, if that happens; but see there, you can't find any bottom to the stuff.”

He thrust his long Alpine staff into the mire as far as it could go; and the other scouts shuddered when they saw that so far as appearances went, the soft muck bed really had no bottom. Any one so unfortunate as to fall in would surely gradually sink far over his head, unless he were rescued in time, or else had the smartness to effect his own release by seizing hold of a low-hanging branch and gradually drawing his limbs out of the clinging stuff.

Then they all looked ahead, as though wondering what the prospect might be for a continuance of this perilous trip which had broken up their great hike.

”I guess it's about time to make another try with a shout or so, Fritz,”

said Paul, instead of giving the order for an advance.

”All right, just as you say,” returned the other, ”we've come quite some distance since we made the last big noise; and if he's weak and wounded, yet able to answer at all, p'raps we might hear him this time. Line up here, fellers, and watch my hands now, so's all to break loose together.”

It was a tremendous volume of sound that welled forth, as Fritz waved his hands upward after a fas.h.i.+on that every high school fellow understood; why, Seth declared that it could have been heard a mile or more away, and from that part of the swamp half way out in either direction.