Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/402

 times on his hands and knees. He already foresaw the moment his strength would fail him, and when he must die!

As he proceeded, he suddenly found himself opposite a marsh—or rather, to that which he felt very soon was a marsh, for the night was very dark. He fell unexpectedly into the thick mud, and, notwithstanding his struggles and a desperate resistance, he felt himself sink by degrees into this miry ground; some minutes later he was engulfed up to his waist. "Death is here at last," he said; "and such a death!"

He fought despairingly, but all his efforts only served to plunge him more deeply into the grave which the unhappy man believed to be his own. Not a fragment of wood to support him, not a reed to hold to. He fancied it was all over. His eyes closed. "Master, master, save me!" he cried.

And this despairing cry, already almost stifled, and to which no echo replied, lost itself in the thick darkness of the night.

Kennedy had taken up his post of observation in front of the balloon, he had not ceased to search the horizon attentively. After some time he turned towards the doctor and said, "If I be not mistaken, there is a troop of horsemen moving over there—I cannot distinguish them yet. At any rate they are disturbed, for they are raising a cloud of dust."

"May it not be a contrary wind?" said Samuel; "a current which may carry us to the north?" And he got up to examine the horizon.

"I do not think that, Samuel," replied Kennedy; "it is a herd of gazelles, or wild oxen."

"Perhaps, Dick, but the gathering is at least nine or ten miles off; and, for my part, even with the telescope, I can make nothing of them."

"Well, I shall not lose sight of them, there is something extraordinary going on which interests me, it is something