"All overboard!" cried Geoff, who was in command of the launch. "There's no use in trying to pole her off, for she's hard and fast. Overboard with you!" Pulling his long boots off and his breeches higher up his legs, he was over the side in a twinkling, while the crew, enjoying the experience amazingly, followed him, Phil helping to set an example. "Now, all together, boys!" shouted Geoff. "Pull her off! Pull her back! That's done it; she's moving!" Not once, but half a dozen times, in the next two or three days, were they forced to extricate themselves from a similar sort of situation by similar methods. For, let us explain, there was no opportunity to take careful account of the obstacles before them, to steer a slow and cautious course, and to make a complete reconnaissance of the route they were to follow. Under ordinary conditions, with time at their disposal, Geoff would have steered his launch at a placid pace, and would have avoided enclosed waters where islands of mud abounded; but now, with this expedition, it was a case of each man for himself, of push ahead all the time. It was a race, in fact, a friendly race, between the army and the navy, each service vying with the other in its efforts to push onward, and each secretly determined to get to the goal before the other. "If we don't look out we shall be running our heads into a hornets' nest," Geoff cried irritably, when, for the fifth time at least, he and his crew had had to leap into the shallow water and pull their vessel free of a mud-bank. "This sort of headlong course will not help us to beat the enemy, but will give them an enormous opportunity." Whereat Phil grinned. He was one of those incautious, careless, happy-go-lucky sort of subalterns who never think of consequences, and who, perhaps for that very reason, so seldom come to grief. Perhaps it was a lucky star which always watched over Phil's progress, for, in any case, happy-go-lucky though he was, careless to an irritating degree, he yet had so far come through many a little adventure unscathed. "Tremendous opportunity--yes!" he told Geoff. "But--but will they take it? Bet you they're already thinking of bolting; for don't forget, my boy, we've given them a pretty hard hammering. Besides, an expedition such as this is, spread out through the marshes, ain't so jolly easy to tackle. You could stop a portion, perhaps--say one flank, or the portion in the centre of the ground, or rather the water. What do you Head-quarters chaps call it? It would be called terrain if it was a question of land operations, and I don't happen to know the term under these conditions. But that's what might happen; one portion of our spread-out front might get stopped, but the others would push on like blazes! Cheer up, Geoff! It'll all come right, and you'll earn promotion yet."