ENGULFED IN A QUICKSAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11825, 30 November 1901, Page 7 (Supplement)

ENGULFED IN A QUICKSAND.

: A HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE. j)NE morning, at Shwebo, Upper Burma, I ifter a very hot, sultry night, I arose with the determination of going for a walk beifore the sun got up. My husband was asleep in the verandah, so 1 did not disturb him, but slipped quietly out, loosed my j dog, a young terrier, and struck acres? the '' plain before it was dawn. I shaped my j course along a nullah for a lake about a | mile and a-half away, with the view of en- 1 joying the cool breezes oil' the water. ! "Descending the nullah, 1 had to walk some I distance along its bed to find an easy open- i iug for the ascent of the opposite bank, j Presently my attention was attracted by I gome openings which I did not remember j having seen before. They were a succession of -wedge-shaped crevasses, running tack for a distance of 30ft or 40it from the kink, mid about 10ft deep, evidently caused by recent rains. Curiosity made.me scramble into one of these cracks. I passed on from one branch to the other, until brought to a halt at the end of one by an abrupt ledge, below which appeared another crack at right angles to the one I was following, but I differing from all the others by having a level surface at the bottom. It'was shaped! somewhat like an oval saw-pit, the iloor ' being some Sift below the ledge I was standing on. 1 looked at it for some time, curiously wondering what could have caused it, and had thought out a little theory in my j mind that perhaps it was an old shaft of a ! gold mine where ages ago men had toiled j and toiled for small quantities of gold. It was still very early ; not a sound was to be heard. The grey banks above my head and the grey sky of the morning together looked dismal and dreary. As*l turned to continue my walk I caught sight of a pretty feather lying at the bottom. "I will take that with me," I remarked, and, putting my hand to the ground, I vaulted down into the pit. The moment my feet touched the sandy ! bottom the surface cracked like an egg- i shell, and I was at once knee-keep in some horrible composition, the like of which I had never seen before. I secured the fea- • ther, however, and stuck it in the pugireo of my solar topee, thinking, "1 shall need both hands to scramble up out of this mess." , In jumping down I had sprung well out from the bank, which I could now just i reach with my finger-tips, but not sutiici- j ently well to get any grip of it. I tried to step nearer to it, when, to my horror, I found I could not move either of my feet. I , tugged and pulled with all my* might, al- '' most dislocating my knees and ankles in my frenzied endeavours to free myself, while my dog, who had jumped down immediately after me, was tearing at my skirt in his endeavour to drag himself out. I was by this time embedded ? to quite one-third of my height, and the whole horror of the situation suddenly dawned upon me. Then I think I fainted, but instinct must have kept ! ■ me from entirely collapsing, as I did not' fall, and my left ami remained rigidly j sketched out to the bank, into which my finger-nails * had embedded themselves. When I regained consciousness I found myself engulfed almost to the hips, and oozing up all round me was a thick, viscid, black substance, a sort of sand-mud, crumbly, yet clinging with a glue-like tenacity. All the time my dog was still tearing at my clothing. I managed to reach over, and with difficulty released him. picked him up. and threw him on the bank, where hlhset up a continuous barkirg. I tried to send him home, thinking that I might thus raise an alarm, but he had not been trained, and only continued to yap and bark; this reminded me that it was time I began to raise an alarm myself, and I added my scream,*! to his yelps till the place echoed a;;.. ■■■>•■■ But as soon as the echoes lied died awaydown the canyon all was still as death again, and despair seemed to grasp my heart as I noticed that I was still sinking — still sinkingslowlyslowlybut, oh, so surely i being sucked down a* it seemed into the i very bowels of the earth. I struggled and screamed again and again till I was utterly exhausted to find that I was deeper | and yet deeper in the mire. j When my feet first struck the surface of | the quicksand the skirt of my dress (a white j _ drill costume) had floated out, and I noticed that the greater part of it was still on the | .surface but was now beginning to be drag- | ged down at the waist. The idea suddenly : struck me that by spreading it out wider all round me it would arrest my continued sinking for a time at least, and now with me time was everything. I knew that if I could . hold out till" ten o'clock I should have a ' chance of rescue, as by about that time the j transport mules would be turned loose, and some of the attendants would come that way j sufficiently near to hear my cries. •_, j I was not sinking nearly so fast now; the skirt was certainly holding me up, but I was embedded right up to my armpits. The clamour raised by myself and the dog had the effect of scaring the horrid monsters | away ; they soared aloft, wheeling round | and"round 'high up in the air, waiting for j that which I dared not think of. The smell \ of the gaseous ooze so close to my nose Beemed to be fast overcoming me, and I redoubted my shrieks, hoping to make someone hear me. Looking up presently, hoarse with shouting, I was given heart again by seeing that the vultures were disappearing, from which I concluded that help must be approaching, and that the birds were accordingly making off in search of prey else- | where. I . Presently I could hear the thud of galloping hoofs in the distance, and concentrating all my strength I gave voice to cry j after cry for help, "which was shortly responded'to. and a few minutes later a black j face peeped over the bank above me. The , look of startled astonishment on the face ' as it caught sight of me, buried almost to : the neck, with mv arms held up. and what j was left exposed of mv skirt bunched around i my neck like a magnified Elizabethan ruffle, | was too comical for anything, and I burst , into a fit of hysterical laughter. How j human the face looked with its quizzical, ' astonished expression ; but the owner of it . had sense, and rapidly applied it, for witii- j out making more ado he snatched oft" his long ; turban and threw it at me, retaining one end . himself. , .. The turban uncoiled as it fell., ana i grasped it with both hands.— Anne L. Wood, in the Wide World Magazine. i