"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 fashion 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.
Then they strained their ears to listen for any possible answer. The seconds began to creep past, and disappointment had already commenced to grip hold of their hearts when they started, and looked quickly, eagerly, at one another.
"Did you hear it?" asked Fritz, gasping for breath after his exertions at holding on to that long-drawn school yell.
"We sure did—something!" replied Jotham, instantly, "but whether that was the balloonist answering, Eben or Noodles calling out to us, or some wild animal giving tongue, blest if I know."