Page:The Snake's Pass (Stoker).djvu/88

 where it curved around the base of a grassy mound, or shoulder of the mountain.

"Is it a dangerous bog?" I queried.

"Rather! It is just as bad a bit of soft bog as ever I saw. I wouldn't like to see anyone or anything that I cared for try to cross it!"

"Why not?"

"Because at any moment they might sink through it; and then, good-bye—no human strength or skill could ever save them."

"Is it a quagmire, then? or like a quicksand?"

"Like either, or both. Nay! it is more treacherous than either. You may call it, if you are poetically inclined, a 'carpet of death!' What you see is simply a film or skin of vegetation of a very low kind, mixed with the mould of decayed vegetable fibre and grit and rubbish of all kinds which have somehow got mixed into it, floating on a sea of ooze and slime—of something half liquid half solid, and of an unknown depth. It will bear up a certain weight, for there is a degree of cohesion in it; but it is not all of equal cohesive power, and if one were to step on the wrong spot—" He was silent.

"What then?"

"Only a matter of specific gravity! A body suddenly immersed would, when the air of the lungs had escaped and the rigor mortis had set in, probably sink a considerable distance; then it would rise after nine days, when decomposition began to generate gases, and make an effort to reach the top. Not succeeding in