"Well," Jack said, confidently, "the sun disappeared over there; that is southwest. The house is in that direction--northeast. Now, if you will keep that big sycamore in your eye and follow me, we shall be nearing the house, as I calculate."
They pushed on in that direction, but had only gone a few yards when the ground became a perfect quagmire of black loam, that looked like coal ground to powder, and was thin as mush.
"This is a brilliant stroke on my part, I must say," Jack cried, facing Kate ruefully. "We must go back and examine the ground, as Indians do, and find our entrance trail in that way. I will watch the ground and you keep an eye on the shrubs. Wherever you see havoc among them you may be sure my manly foot has fallen there."
Suddenly they were conscious of an indescribable change in the place. Neither knew what it was. It had come on in the excitement of their march into the morass--or it had come the instant they both became conscious of it. What was it? Kate turned and looked into Jack's blank face!
"I'm blessed if I know what it is, but it seems as if something had suddenly gone out of the order of things! What is it? Do you feel it; do you notice it?"
"Feel it--see it--why, it is as palpable, or, rather to speak accurately, it is as clearly absent as the color from an oil-painting, leaving mere black and white outlines."
"How besotted I am!" Jack cried; "why, I know. The sun has wholly gone, and the birds and living things have ceased to sing and move."
"That's it; could you believe that it would make such a change? Why, I thought, when we came in, the place was a temple of silence, but it was a mad world compared to this."
"Yes, and we must hurry and get out while we have daylight to help us. I take it you wouldn't care to swim the lagoon. Let us call it lagoon, for this place makes the name appropriate."
"Call it whatever you like, but don't ask me to swim it," Kate cried, pushing on.
"Ah! I have our trail," Jack cries in triumph. "By George, it is wide enough!" he added, bending over where the thick grasses were crushed and broken. "See the advantage of large feet. Now, if you had been alone, 'twould have been as hard as to trace a bird's track."
"Is that an implication that I have Chinese feet?"