The muck clutched at the tires and dragged them down; the plane, with the flippers hard up, reared its tail off the ground and tried to bury its nose into the mud in front of it, but Nick slammed the throttle open before the propeller was far enough down to flick the ground. The propeller blast slapped back at the tail, but at the same time it pulled forward on the plane, and thus created forces that opposed each other. While the tail tended to be blown down into its proper position, the wheels were almost stuck, and tended to nose the ship downward. The tail remained four feet in the air--higher than normal take-off position--and gradually the plane decelerated to a pace that permitted safe taxying. The mud was so deep that at fifteen hundred revolutions of the propeller, the ship barely crept over the ground. “I’ve gummed things now!” Nick muttered, when the ship had stopped. “We’ll never get out of this field before next summer! That brakeman will have to stay where he is.” But, hopeless as he was of taking off from the field again, he left the Douglas in a corner of the field and hurried to town. He went first to the depot, and routed out the station agent. “Where’re the men who got hurt in the train wreck?” he asked. “I’m down here with an airplane--an ambulance--to take them to a hospital.” “Up the track a piece,” the agent replied. “The conductor walked back through the water and told us about ’em, but there haint nothin’ we can do about it.” “Do? Haven’t you got a boat?” “No, haint a boat in McLearson. The conductor, he thought they’d send a seaplane down here for ’em--they’re still up there in the caboose. I reckon that brakeman’s sufferin’ suthin’ too, the way he got that engine on his legs! Wouldn’t be surprised they’d have to amp’tate them legs. Mirac’lous, too; he’d oughtta been drowned, but somehow or other he got out from under that engine!” * * * * * Nick looked at his watch. He had consumed an hour and twenty-five minutes of precious time in getting to McLearson; only slightly more than that amount remained before darkness, and at all costs he must be in the air before night: he knew that he would never get out of the field after dusk--if he did then. “Got a hand-car around here?” he asked the agent. “Nothin’ but a push-car--you couldn’t do no good with that. The water’d come up over the top of it. We thought o’ that, but we knew we’d drownd them fellers if we tried to bring ’em through on a push-car.” “Where is it? We’re going after those men. Is a doctor up there with them?” “Sure, they’s a doctor up there--walked up through the water. But I’m a-tellin’ you, you can’t do no good with a push-car.” “Get it!” Nick snapped, and the agent moved with alacrity to obey. While he was gone Nick looked around the yards. A pile of ties stood back of one switch, and he estimated their weight.