Four hours have passed. The paddling and rowing is agonizing work, and so the eight of you work in shifts. The marsh is dense with low-hanging trees and exotic plant life.
It is also ungodly hot and humid.
Your clothes cling uncomfortably to your body, soaked with sweat. The swamp smells of feces and sulfur. Low-hanging vines and branches brush against you. The air is filled with grunts of exertion and the constant buzzing of insects.
One man must hold a pitch-covered torch at all times to keep the bloodsuckers away.
Despite the conditions, your force of thirty rowboats push on. Two hundred men, their gear protected inside of water-resistant bags, continue the slow journey onward.
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