Suddenly a human hand gripped his wrist. He was jerked upwards, perhaps a foot. A moment later he was gulping in great lungfuls of air.
He had been suffocating ten or twelve inches beneath that repulsive slime, as securely captured as if he had been a thousand feet deep.
It had taken Greer and Smith that length of time to wriggle a yard or two and fish him out.
"Steady! Steady!" said Caradoc in a lifeless voice. "Steady there, Madden! Hold him tightly, Greer!"
Greer made some sort of groaning reply, when Caradoc snarled, "Let 'em sting, you scullion! What if they do kill you! Is there any better way to die?"
Madden felt a great pushing and jostling at his body. He raked the seaweed from his face and opened his eyes. The Englishman was shoving fiercely at the American's shoulder, Greer, ahead, pulling at an elbow. The burning insects had swarmed on both his rescuers. Caradoc's sun-baked face had a yellowish, bloodless hue, his lean jaws clenched under his choppy white mustache. In the midst of his burning pain he held his legs rigid, pushed Leonard with one hand and pawed furiously through the viscid tangle with the other.
The constancy of his companions braced Madden like a dash of ice water. His own weakness had brought about this dangerous plight. The American caught up his buoy, and between great gasps of the blessed air, rapped out that he could go by himself, and began making his own way forward.
So the three worked themselves over the oozy bed of fire. The Englishman's arms shot into the slime with the regularity of pistons. He appeared to make no haste, yet he made remarkable speed. Only his distended nostrils, pain-tightened mouth, grim eyes, showed that he was in torture.
Even amid his own suffering Leonard felt a thrill of admiration for Smith's endurance and working power. He even found time to wonder dimly if Smith's people, that rich, cold, proud family, if they could see their remittance man now, would not stoop to claim him as a kinsman.
All at once the poignant and disgusting attack of the insects ceased. A flood of ecstatic relief swept over the adventurers. Without a word, all three quit squirming, caught their floats under their armpits and swung down in a limp luxurious rest.