“But, Max, he’s all right, as far as I can see,” expostulated Bandy-legs, in reality unwilling to keep up that violent exertion just to please some silly whim on the part of the fisherman, who, like as not, would give them the laugh after they came up puffing and blowing like porpoises.

“Look again,” snapped Max.  “Don’t you see how deep he’s in?  Pretty nearly up to his waist, isn’t he?”

“That’s all right,” said Bandy-legs, “but if the silly has gone and waded deeper than he meant to, why don’t he just turn around and walk out again?”

“Because he can’t!” Max told him, still running.

“Hey! w-w-what’s hindering him!” stammered Toby, thrilled by this new mystery that had so suddenly dawned upon them.

“The sand’s got too tight a grip on him,” cried Max, “and he’s sinking deeper all the time!”

“Oh! thunder, it’s quicksand, then!” exploded Bandy-legs.

Having now the key to the enigma explaining Steve’s strange action, as well as his queer antics while floundering about out there in the little stream, both boys could easily see that May evidently spoke the truth.  So those envious Spanish courtiers found it easy to balance an egg on end, after Columbus showed them how to do the trick.

In another half minute they arrived on the shore of the little stream.  Steve out there, with the shallow water coming now up almost to his waist, greeted their arrival with a sickly grin.

“Sorry to bother you, boys,” he said, “but seems like I’ve gone and got into a nasty pickle.  Please yank me out of this, won’t you?”

Impetuous Bandy-legs was about to instantly start forward when Max gripped him by the arm.

“Don’t be foolish, Bandy-legs,” he told the other, severely.  “You’d only get yourself in the same boat, if you stood there and tried to drag Steve out; and two would be harder to take care of than one.”

“But say, don’t be too slow about starting something, will you?” urged Steve, once again looking nervous.  “Why, I’m sinking right along, I tell you.  Every time I try to get one foot up t’ other goes down three inches further, because I have to bear all my weight on it.  This is no laughing matter, boys.  I’ll be swallowed up before your eyes soon if you don’t get busy.  Max, you ought to know how to extricate a fellow from the quicksand!”

“There are lots of ways in which it can be done,” the other told him, meanwhile measuring distances with his eye, as though he already had a plan in mind.  “If when you first discovered that you were sinking you had thrown yourself sideways, and started to crawl or roll, regardless of how wet you got, you might have made it, for in that way you’d have presented more of your body to the action of the sand.  Then a mattress could be made from branches, weeds or any old thing, that would bear the weight of one or two of us.  But I’ve got even a better scheme than that to work.”