"Yes; come on!"
Now they had come to the "flowerpots" of the Playground, beautiful grass plots interwoven with delicate blooms and ringed about with water lilies. Into the first one Payne went with a splash to his armpits; the grass was only a treacherous skin above a hole of liquid mud, from which Higgins with difficulty drew his employer.
For an hour or more they threaded their way, cautiously between these beautiful traps. Then, they found themselves on the brink of a gully a hundred yards in width; and Payne, driving ahead at full speed, cried out in anguish as he realized how they were stopped.
"Hold on," said Higgins. "That ground on the other side is higher, and it looks to me like a different formation. Yes; it's limestone with sand on top. Cheer up!"
Payne threw a dry branch onto the mud and it sank immediately. Wearily he turned at right angles to the trail and led the way in a search for the end of the gully. For a mile they followed the barrier of mud, then Higgins called a halt. "Look at this formation." He pointed to a slight swell in the level monotony of the swamp. "If that showed in any human country I'd say it was the beginning of a little ridge."
The slight rise ran to the edge of the gully, where it was broken, and appeared again on the farther side of the mud.
"There's just a chance that it runs right through that mud," Higgins was probing into the slime with a broken branch. "Yep. Here it is, about five feet down. Ugh! Pretty little piece of wading, but unless I miss my guess it will be miles before we find another fording place through that mud. Wish Willy High Pockets was here. He's the boy who could show us how."
Payne looked at the span of slime between the banks.
"Do you think we'll be through if we get to the other bank?" he asked.
"Sure. This mess can't last forever. Hold on." Payne had stepped off into the breast-high mud. "What are you going to do?"