rusting in his pole he splashed and beat the
narrow space between him and the dense boggy side, where the sphagnum
came down into the water.

Dick followed suit at the other end, and Dave swept his pole sidewise as
if he were mowing weeds below the surface.

"Oh!" cried Dick, as he overbalanced himself, and nearly went in from
the stern. He would have gone headlong had not Mr Marston made a
bound, and caught him as he vainly strove to recover his balance.

The effort was well timed, and saved him, but of course the consequences
of jumping about in a boat are well-known. The punt gave such a lurch
that Dave almost went out, while, as for Tom, he was literally jerked up
as from a spring-board, and, dropping his pole, he seemed to be taking a
voluntary dive, describing a semicircle, and going down head-first, not
into the narrow slit between him and the boggy shore, but right into the
semi-fluid mass of sphagnum, water, and ooze, where he disappeared to
his knees.

Tom's dive sent the boat, as he impelled it with his feet, a couple of
yards away; and for a moment or two those who were in it seemed half
paralysed, till a roar of laughter from Dick, who did not realise the
danger, roused Dave to action.

For the dense mass, while fluid enough to allow Tom to dive in, was not
sufficiently loose to let him rise; and there he stuck, head downwards,
and with his legs kicking furiously.

"Now if we was to leave him," said Dave sententiously, "he wouldn't
never be no more trouble to his father; but I suppose we must pull him
out."

"Pull him out, man? Quick, use your pole!"

"Ay, I'm going to, mester," said Dave coolly. "Theer we are," he
continued, as he sent the end of the punt back to where poor Tom's legs
went on performing a series of kicks which were sometimes like those
made by a swimming frog, and at others as if he were trying to walk
upside down along an imaginary flight of aerial stairs.

The time seemed long, but probably it was not half a minute from the
time Tom dived into the bog till the young engineer seized him by the
legs and dragged him into the boat, to sit upon the bottom, gasping,
spitting, and rubbing the ooze from his eyes. But it was a good two
minutes before he was sufficiently recovered to look round angrily, and
in a highly-pitched quavering voice exclaimed:

"Look here: who was it did that?"

"Nobody," roared Dick. "Oh, I say, Tom, what a game! Are your feet
wet?"

Tom turned up