Their hands and faces were scratched and bleeding, their clothes torn in a hundred places, and still they went on. Once Amy became so helplessly entangled in the rank undergrowth that Nell and Jessie were forced to stop and spend precious minutes in the effort to tear her loose.
Again, Jessie, setting the pace, missed her footing on the solid ground and sank into the yielding mud. Luckily, Amy and Nell were close behind her, and with a strength born of desperation pulled her back to a safe footing.
At times they stopped and listened again for Darry’s voice. But no repetition of that cry came to guide them, and they could only struggle on blindly, pantingly, trusting that another hundred yards would bring them to him.
Still no sign of him, and they paused exhausted, to gather strength for a further search. They looked at each other for the first time and wanted to cry at the pitiful picture they made.
Covered with mud, clothes torn, hair hanging stringy and wild from contact with twigs and bushes, faces scratched and bleeding, they themselves might easily have been mistaken for the ones in need of rescue.
But after that one startled look they returned frantically to Darry’s need of help.
“We seem so utterly helpless,” Amy cried despairingly. “We might wander around forever like this and never find him. We have nothing to guide us—nothing!”
“Come on,” urged Jessie. “I am sure the cry came from this direction. If we go on, we have a chance of finding him. If we stand still we have none.”
So on again, discouragement and despair growing as they pushed farther and farther into the tangled vegetation of the swamp.
At last, when even Jessie had begun to acknowledge they had failed, they heard voices. They stopped short, fearful lest the owners of them might be some of the men and women from the hut in the swamp.