“So is mine, unfortunately,” added Miss Dixon.

“Fortunately I think the two skirts of my daughters will be sufficient,” said Mr. DeVere, as he opened his keen-bladed knife.

“Oh, I am going down!” cried Mr. Bunn, in anguished tones.

“Here are the skirts!” cried Alice, as she came out with her own and Ruth’s over her arm.

Ready hands aided Mr. DeVere in cutting the stout material into strips that were quickly knotted together, making a strong rope.

“It’s a shame to spoil your suit,” said Paul to Alice.

“It doesn’t matter.  The skirts were only cheap ones, of khaki cloth, but they are very strong.  I am glad we wore them.”

“And I guess Mr. Bunn will be, too,” added the young actor.

“Now we’ll have you out!” cried Mr. DeVere, as he flung one end of the novel rope to the actor in the bog.  Mr. Bunn caught it, and, at the direction of Mr. Pertell, looped it about his chest, just under his arms.

“Now, all pull together!” cried the manager.  “But take it gradually, until we see what strain this rope will stand.”

Indeed a slow, gradual pull was the only feasible method of releasing Mr. Bunn.  But with the rope around him, he felt that he was going to be saved, and did not struggle so violently.

Often when one gets into a quicksand bog the more one struggles the faster and deeper one sinks.  Only it is almost impossible not to struggle against the impending fate.

With the skirt-rope about him, and his friends pulling on it, Mr. Bunn’s hand were free.  Seeing this, and realizing that the more force that was applied, up to a certain point, the sooner would the actor be freed, Ruth cried: 

“If we had another rope we girls could help, and Mr. Bunn could hold on to it with his hands,” for she and her sister, as well as Miss Pennington and Miss Dixon, were doing nothing.

“Let’s go to the steamer and get one,” proposed Miss Dixon.

“It would be too late,” declared Alice.  Then, as she looked about the little clearing where the accident had taken place she saw, dangling from a tree, a long vine of some creeping plant.  There were several stems twined together.

“There’s our rope!” she cried.  “That vine!”

“Oh, Alice!  How splendid!” exclaimed her sister.  “You think of everything!”

“Well, let’s stop thinking, and work!” suggested the younger girl.  “They need all the help they can get to pull Mr. Bunn out of that bog.”

Together the girls managed to get off a long piece of the stout vine, which made a most excellent substitute for a rope.

“I suppose if I had thought of this first we needn’t have cut our skirts,” said Alice.

“I’m not sorry we didn’t,” was her sister’s reply.

“Nor am I!”

“Catch this, Mr. Bunn!” called Alice, as with the vine rope she went as near the bog hole as was safe.