Page:Young Hunters in Porto Rico.djvu/156

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" shall I do now?"

Dick asked himself the question several times. Here he was up to the knees in the bog and unable to stir either foot an inch forward or backward.

In vain he caught at the moss around him. It came up in his hands, revealing only more muck, black, slippery and pasty.

"If I stay here much longer I'll be planted for good," he groaned. "Oh, I must get out somehow!"

He struggled again and pulled with might and main upon one foot. But as that member came up, the other went down just so much deeper, and in new alarm he set down both feet again, to find himself now almost up to his waist.

His struggles had disturbed several swamp crabs—dirty and ugly looking creatures, peculiar to Porto Rico and other West India Islands. They crawled all around him, hissing viciously and glaring at him with their hard, beady eyes.