"Here I go," my friend exclaimed, striking his reluctant animal, who didn't appear to relish the expedition.
The spirited animal bounded under the blow, and dashed down the bank, sinking to his knees at every step in the light soil, and straining badly to carry his master in safety to the opposite side. The water was only up to the saddle girths, and the stream was not more than twenty feet wide, yet I feared that both horse and rider would sink before my eyes in the treacherous quicksands which composed the bed of the brook.
"Use whip and spur," I shouted, "or you will lose your horse."
Mr. Brown understood his danger full as well as myself. He lifted the animal with his bridle, and then drove his sharp spurs into his panting sides, but in spite of his most violent exertions the gallant gray floundered about, and did not make an inch headway, and with prompt action was alone enabled to draw one foot and then another from the sands, and prevent being swallowed alive.
The dark water was lashed into foam by the struggle, and yet I could offer no assistance to my friend or his horse. It seemed to me that each moment the latter was sinking deeper and deeper, and in a few moments must disappear from sight.
Mr. Brown appeared to entertain the same opinion, for he disengaged his feet from the stirrups, and threw himself from the animal, striking the water flat upon his stomach, and swimming, with quick strokes, towards the opposite bank, which he gained, and by aid of the branch of a gum tree, which overhung the brook, succeeded in swinging his light form upon solid earth.
The horse, relieved of the weight of his rider, seemed encouraged to renewed exertions, and after prodigious efforts, emerged from the quicksands, and uttered a neigh, as though rejoicing at his escape.
"You will have to go farther up," shouted Mr. Brown, shaking himself, and looking at his soiled clothes rather ruefully. "The bed of the brook is so quidling, that it won't bear the weight of a mosquito; and if you should commence sinking, the Lord only knows when you would stop, or where."
Not wishing to test the truth of his assertion, I rode along the bank of the brook nearly a mile, until I found a place where the water was more than six inches deep, with a solid bed of gravel. At this spot I crossed without trouble, and then we continued our journey across the country, Mount Tarrengower looming up before us like a giant amid pigmies.
"Devilish narrow escape for me and the horse," Mr. Brown said, while walking our animals over some rough ground; "I thought at one time that we both would have to go under, and I began to think of a prayer or two. I knew something would happen to us after talking about poor Buckerly in the manner that we did."