We left our campsite early this morning; I tried to sleep through the various morning rituals, but they were too loud. Next time, I'll cover my head with my cloak before I go to sleep; maybe that way I can skip that nonsense. Poling our way along the stagnant, nasty, smelly, mucky waters, much of the morning passed uneventfully, as long as one doesn't consider being made an all you can eat buffet for flying insects eventful. We came to an area which was blessedly free of the little nuisances, but unfortunately this was probably due to the giant frogs off in the rushes, who decided that as good of a meal as mosquitoes might be, druids would be even better. I find the irony rather amusing, personally; some animals apparently like Elealion as much as he likes them! But we couldn't let them have him; even if he still hasn't proven to be of great use, he's our friend. Leighla and I shot at the frogs and we were fortunately able to save him, aided greatly by DB's pulling on the rope which Elealion had grabbed. Meanwhile, Mitsy just stood there screaming her fool head off, Prihelm pulped one of the beasts with one swing of his sword, covering himself with frog guts and not doing me much good either, and Haley showed all of us why mages are better advised not to enter melee by exhibiting her great prowess with a staff. Of course, the poor girl had to wander through the nasty water to do so, but she's still probably cleaner than I am because of it. The last few frogs hopped away rapidly, and that was that. Oh, except that when I gave Prihelm a shove to get him into the water (he really needed a bath, and I wasn't much better off myself), Mitsy screamed some more. That girl is definitely even less suited for this kind of life than I am!

Eventually, we got to a wider stretch of river, almost a lake, and (wouldn't you know it!) Prihelm managed to get the pole stuck again. We tried pulling it loose, but to no avail. Eventually, it was decided that someone would have to go down there and rescue it for us. Haley, bless her soul, failed to take one step backwards (I sure wasn't going to get into that nasty water if I could avoid it!), and went down a few times. All of a sudden, the raft started moving; she'd freed us! Of course, this was when we noticed that Haley had failed to come back to us, something that was made easier to see by the fact that she was struggling to keep her head above water. And then, oh gods! a skeleton popped up! A walking, talking skeleton (well, okay, so it didn't talk, but still...)! And it was trying to drown my friend! I knew I had to stop it, even as my fingers shook so badly I was probably better off not even trying to shoot it; in my state, I was at least as likely to hit Haley as I was to hit the undead. Of course, Elealion promptly went into hiding, cowering under his pony, where he probably got spattered with all kinds of fertilizer, while Mitsy (guess what?) stood there screaming (what a surprise!) and Prihelm the wonder paladin, scourge of evil, just stared in shock, leaving it up to DB, Leighla, and me to rescue our companion. DB jumped into the water and swam after the two, but before he could get there, Leighla's incredible shot knocked the skeleton's head off, killing the foul thing.

Haley was still panicking; she kept swimming away for a while, but she eventually came to her senses and she and DB got back onto the raft with us. And here we've been ever since. I see that we're approaching time to camp, and since I need a bath and I need to clean my clothes and I need to do both in privacy, I want to start on my food now and sneak out of camp while the rest are still eating, so I'm done for the night.