Jack desperately hacked at a young tree with his big pocketknife. If he could reach Sandy with it in time, he felt that he could save his companion yet.
"Keep up your courage, Sandy," he kept on saying, in a voice that would quaver a bit in spite of itself, "I'll get you out of it, never fear."
"You'll have to hurry then, Jack," rejoined the other lad in an astonishingly calm voice, "this stuff is drawing me down as if it had hands."
At last the sapling was cut, and Jack hastened to the edge of the swamp to extend it toward his half-immersed companion. Under his directions Sandy clutched it with the grip of a drowning man.
"Now, then," cried Jack, exerting every ounce of his strength. He tugged with might and main, but Sandy still stuck fast. It occurred to Jack that, by getting closer to the boy he was trying to help, he might be of more assistance. Cautiously he ventured forward and then tried another tug.
In order to make this final effort more successful he had braced his feet against a stick of solid-looking timber that lay in the morass. But it proved "a rotten reed." As his weight came against it the soft wood appeared literally to "melt away."
Jack felt his feet slide from under him, and then—horrifying sensation—something seemed to grip them. He struggled in vain. A fly on a sheet of sticky flypaper might have tried to free itself as effectually.
The morass gave a queer, sucking sound, and great bubbles of marsh gas rose to the surface and broke as Jack floundered about. But every struggle served only to tighten his slimy bonds.
The quagmire had our two young fugitives fast in its treacherous embrace.
"Help!" shouted Jack.