“We’re not yet out of the enchanted land,” he said. “We are still seeing things! The leather bag comes back out of the sky, and Mose goes up in the air. I’m for getting down to the Gulf right soon.”
“Have you looked in the bag for any solution of the puzzle?” asked Clay. “There may be a note of some kind there: a note of explanation. See?”
“Yes,” declared Alex., pointing over the side, and not answering the question about the bag, “I see that we are stuck in the mud, and not likely to get out until another flood, a year, or perhaps two years, off.”
[CHAPTER XVII—GETTING OUT OF THE MUD]
Clay’s face plainly expressed the dismay he felt as he bent over the gunwale and looked downward in the growing light of the morning. The Rambler lay in a bed of soft, oozy mud, with harder ground between her and the “tow-head.”
“I presume,” Alex. said, “that the people of this country will be glad to see that the river lowered in the night! So are we?”
“We ought to have provided against this,” Clay exclaimed, in self-reproach. “We might just as well have anchored a few yards farther down. What next, I wonder?”
“The longer we wait before getting the motor boat into the water,” Alex. said, “the harder work it will be, for the river is lowering every minute.”
Clay scratched his head and estimated the distance to deep water.
“We’ll have to put on our bathing suits and take to the mud,” he decided. “By all taking hold, we may be able to get her out of this mess. Nice job it is, too!”