At length a sergeant of grenadiers stuck fast, and declared himself incapable of moving either forward or backward; and just after, Ensign Prentice and I felt ourselves in a similar predicament, close together.

'I find it impossible to move; I am sinking;' resounded on every side.

What to do I knew not: every moment brought increase of perplexity, and augmented danger, as those who could not proceed kept gradually subsiding.

From our misfortunes, however, those in the rear profited.

Warned by what they saw and heard, they inclined to the right towards the head of the creek, and thereby contrived to pass over.
Our distress would have terminated fatally, had not a soldier cried out to those on shore to cut boughs of trees*, and throw them to us--a lucky thought, which certainly saved many of us from perishing miserably; and even with this assistance, had we been burdened by our knapsacks, we could not have emerged; for it employed us near half an hour to disentangle some of our number.