The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the sticky gumbo.

Time passed on.

A dark and lowering night was imminent.
The Bishop grew anxious.

Macmillan, with whip and voice, encouraged his team, but all in vain.

The Bishop's anxiety increased with the approach of a threatening storm.
"It is growing late, Mr.Macmillan, and it looks like rain.
Something must be done." "It does that, Your Lordship, but the brutes won't pull half their own weight without I speak to them in the way they are used to." The good man was in a sore strait.