If he could not reach his machete with his still half-numbed right hand and hack his way free from the branches before the water rose to his mouth and nose as he lay on his back, Bomba would die—drown like a rat in a trap.
This certainty roused him at once to frantic effort. By a desperate strain, his hand found its way to the machete in his belt. The sharp-pointed twigs of the branch that imprisoned his chest tore at his flesh cruelly, but Bomba did not even feel the pain.
It was one thing to die on his feet, fighting to the last breath, and another to lie there flat on his back, while the water crept up and up, seeking to close his nostrils, fill his throat, and deprive him of life.
He had the machete now, and was hacking feebly at the nearest branch, for the strength had not yet come back into his hand and arm. He succeeded in cutting away some of it. The fragments brushed aside fell with a sickening splash into the water.
Slow work! Heart-breaking work! If only the rain would stop, the torrential downpour slacken for a while, he might yet get free. But in the lowering heavens to which Bomba lifted his anguished eyes there was no hope. It would need but a short time to fill the pool to overflowing.
The water crept higher, while Bomba slashed furiously at the confining branches. Steadily, sections of them came away and dropped into the muddy water—but not fast enough!
The chill of the rising waters was about his shoulders now. When his neck tired of holding his head above the surface, he could feel the clammy touch upon his ear.
He had cleared away much of that network of branches. The weight on his chest was lighter. He could breathe more freely.
He tried to lift himself, but could not. That dreadful incubus still held him securely.
Chilled to the bone, shivering, he went to work again. More branches and still more were pushed aside and dropped into the pool. The lapping of the water sounded in his ears as though death were crooning its awful lullaby.