bled out I tried lying flat on the marsh
with the reeds laid over sideways underneath me. But they didn't hold me
up and anyway I knew I couldn't lie that way forever. I wondered how a
scout had ever gone through here.

Before I knew how to swim I came mighty near to getting drowned and I
got lost in the woods, too, when I was a tenderfoot. But this was worse
than anything I ever knew before. Once I sank down almost to my
shoulders and I guess I would have been a goner, only my feet struck
something hard and flat and I stood on that until I got rested a
little.

All the while I looked around to see if I could decide where the land
might be a little harder, but I guess I must have been in the worst
part of it. I decided that the safest thing I could do was to stand
just where I was. I didn't know what it was I was standing on, but
anyway it didn't seem to sink any, so I was kind of safe there, as you
might say. But I knew I could never raise myself out of that place and
I'd have to just stand there till I got so tired and hungry, that I'd
drop down and be sucked into the marsh.

So anyway, I'd have to die, I was sure of that only I didn't want to die
any sooner than I had to. Two or three times I shouted as loud as I
could, but I knew it wasn't any use, because I was two or three miles
away from any house. Even if anybody knew, I didn't see how they could
get to me and it was only by good luck that I wasn't dead already on
account of the hard thing I was standing on. Every once in a while
bubbles would come up and I thought it was because that thing I was
standing on was sinking lower. The marsh was just about even with my
shoulders and I kept looking sideways at my shoulders all the time, so
as to see if I was going down any and sometimes I thought I was. But I
guess I wasn't.

The weeds stood up all around me so I couldn't see, except up in the air
and it was like being in a grave with just my head out. Gee, I thought
about the fellows hiking it to Little Valley and beginning work on the
house-boat and waiting for me to come, and I could just kind of hear
them jollying Pee-wee, and oh, I wished I was there. I was wondering who
the Silver Foxes would elect for their patrol leader and then I got to
thinking how nobody, not even my mother and father, would ever know what
became of me, because you can't drag a marsh like you can a river. And it
seemed kind of funny like, to die without anybody ever knowing what
became