“Maybe,” returned Tom grimly. He did not understand how a boat could be propelled through that bog which was more like thick, slimy mud than it was water.
The two men disappeared behind a screen of bushes, and Mary cried:
“Oh, they are leaving us!”
But the reassuring shout came back:
“We’ll be there with the boat in a minute!”
By this time the thick, muddy water (quicksand in solution it was) began seeping over the edge of the cockpit. Tom was helping Mary to climb up to a dry place, back on the fuselage of the machine, when out of the underbrush the two men emerged, pushing, by means of poles, a low, broad, flat-bottomed punt, which was so broad of beam that it did not sink in the swamp.
“We’ll have you off in a minute!” called the shorter of the two men encouragingly.
By dint of hard pushing they worked the punt to the side of the stranded and bogged aeroplane, and Tom and Mary lost little time in getting into the safer, if less picturesque, craft.
“Will it float with all four of us in it?” Tom asked anxiously.
“I guess so,” the tall stranger said. “But it will be slow work poling back to solid ground.”