"That's a fact! It's too far to throw it, even with the caps off."
At length they concluded to go back for a piece of log they had seen, and to throw this down so as to lessen the distance.
They pulled the log out of the sand, carried it to the muddy spot, and threw it into the mud where they wanted it.
Frank stuck his pole down and felt until he had what he thought a secure hold on it, fixed his eye on the tuft of grass beyond, and sprang into air.
As he jumped the pole slipped from its insecure support into the miry mud, and Frank, instead of landing on the hummock for which he had aimed, lost his direction, and soused flat on his side with a loud "spa-lash," in the water and mud three feet to the left.
He was a queer object as he staggered to his feet in the quagmire; but at the instant a loud "oof, oof," came from, the thicket, not a dozen yards away, and the whole herd of hogs, roused, by his fall, from slumber in their muddy lair, dashed away through the swamp with "oofs" of fear.
"There they go, there they go!" shouted both boys, eagerly,—Willy, in his excitement, splashing across the perilous-looking quagmire, and finding it not so deep as it had looked.
"There's where they go in and out," exclaimed Frank, pointing to a low round opening, not more than eighteen inches high, a little further beyond them, which formed an arch in the almost solid wall of brambles surrounding the place.
As it was now late they returned home, resolving to wait until the next afternoon before taking any further steps. There was not a pound of bacon to be obtained anywhere in the country for love or money, and the flock of sheep was almost gone.
Their mother's anxiety as to means for keeping her dependents from starving was so great that the boys were on the point of telling her what they knew; and when they heard her wishing she had a few hogs to fatten, they could scarcely keep from letting her know their plans. At last they had to jump up, and run out of the room.