“Quicksand,” Francis gasped.
“Quicksand!” all the landscape gasped back at him, and continued to gasp it in fading ghostly whispers, repeating it and gossiping about it with gleeful unction.
“It’s a pot-hole filled with quicksand,” Henry corroborated.
“Maybe the old boy was right in sticking back there on the barking sands,” observed Francis.
The ghostly whispering redoubled upon itself and was a long time in dying away.
By this time they were midway between waist and arm-pits and sinking as methodically as ever.
“Well, somebody’s got to get out of the scrape alive,” Henry remarked.
And, even without discussing the choice, both men began to hoist Leoncia up, although the effort and her weight thrust them more quickly down. When she stood, free and clear, a foot on the nearest shoulder of each of the two men she loved, Francis said, though the landscape mocked him:
“Now, Leoncia, we’re going to toss you out of this. At the word ‘Go!’ let yourself go. And you must strike full length and softly on the crust. You’ll slide a little. But don’t let yourself stop. Keep on going. Crawl out to the solid land on your hands and knees. And, whatever you do, don’t stand up until you reach the solid land.—Ready, Henry?”
Between them, though it hastened their sinking, they swung her back and forth, free in the air, and, the third swing, at Francis’ “Go!” heaved her shoreward.