“This is a patch of a different kind,” I thought. Like dull silver it gleamed under the stars, not half as bright as the others. The ground was very unstable all about us. I could feel slow waves rolling sluggishly under my feet, caused by my own and my companions’ footsteps on the thin carpet of vegetable matter covering the morass. When I tested the patch I found it to be slime. Correction southerly, all southerly now, to edge away from the wood. The areas of slime increased in number, multiplied, flowed together. The third I came to seemed to offer some resistance to the probing staff at first, then the pole went in as into water. I lost my balance. My left foot swung forward, to find another hold. Instantly it was under the surface. Just as quick Kent’s arms were about me. Violently he jerked me back, I clinging to my staff. “Thanks!” The ground got worse and worse. Some of the slimy places which appeared firmer than the rest we crossed. Flat-footedly we slithered over them one after the other, our staves held horizontally. Abruptly we were in the peat cuttings--great yawning holes and ditches, running mainly from north to south, black, with sometimes a star or two, mirrored in the foul water a foot or so below the edge. The passage had to be made across bridges of standing peat, hardly ever more than two feet wide, which swayed as we shuffled over them. I held grimly to the western course, as well as I could. Going south seemed easier, but that direction meant no progress toward the frontier, rather the reverse. And north? No, thank you! Not after those shots. I was standing precariously balanced on a peat bridge, the pole thrown far forward as a third leg--oh, those precious poles!--when a splash sounded behind, and a gurgling noise. Kent had gone in. “What’s happened? Can’t you help him? I can’t!” I called to Tynsdale. We were under far too great a stress to feel any particular emotion. At any rate, I was. And as to helping, I couldn’t even turn my head without losing my balance. Before Tynsdale could reply, I heard a slight scramble, the swishing of water, and then Kent’s subdued voice expressing his entirely unsubdued opinion about peat cuttings. Part of his particular bridge had crumbled under his foot. He had fallen into a hole. The stout oak sapling, carried firmly in both hands, one end of it rammed into the ground for a hold, had fallen across the opening, its other end descending on firm ground. It had kept Kent suspended. Only his legs had gone into the water. The incident decided me. “South,” I called over my shoulder. A short time later, the peat holes grew scarcer. “West!” There were the slimy patches again! We went around a few. Most of them we crossed in a bee-line. They seemed firmer here. A few much smaller sheets of water! Then again a flat, unbroken, springy surface. We were all going strong, out to make westing as fast as we could put our feet to the ground; no thought, now, of crouching.