University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.

The three adventurers were entering the gorge of an impassable rapid.

Here had once been the barrier of a cataract; the waters had ground through
it, tumbled it down, and gnawed it to tatters; the scattered bowlders which
showed through the foam were the remnants of the Cyclopean feast.

There appeared to be no escape from death. Any one of those stones would
rend the canvas boat from end to end, or double it into a wet rag; and if a

swimmer should perchance reach the bank, he would drown there looking up at
precipices; or, if he should find a footing, it would only be to starve.

“There is our chance,” said Thurstane, pointing to a bowlder as large as a
house which stood under the northern wall of the cañon, about a quarter of a
mile above the first yeast of the rapid.

He and Glover each took a paddle. They had but one object: it was to get
under the lee of the bowlder, and so stop their descent; after that they would
see what more could be done. Danger and safety were alike swift here; it was
a hurry as of battle or tempest. Almost before they began to hope for success,
they were circling in the narrow eddy, very nearly a whirlpool, which wheeled
just below the isolated rock. Even here the utmost caution was necessary, for
while the Buchanan was as light as a bubble, it was also as fragile.

Sounding the muddy water with their paddles, they slowly glided into the
angle between the bowlder and the precipice, and jammed the fragment of the
towline in a crevice. For the first time in six hours, and in a run of thirty miles,
they were at rest. Wiping the sweat of labor and anxiety from their brows,
they looked about them, at first in silence, querying what next?

“I wish I was on an iceberg,” said Glover in his despair.

“An' I wish I was in Oirland,” added Sweeny. “But if the divil himself
was to want to desart here, he couldn't.”

Thurstane believed that he had seen Clara for the last time, even should she
escape her own perils. Through his field-glass he surveyed the whole gloomy
scene with microscopic attention, searching for an exit out of this monstrous
man-trap, and searching in vain. It was as impossible to descend the rapid as it
was to scale the walls of the cañon. He had just heard Sweeny say, “I wish I
was bein' murthered by thim naygurs,” and had smiled at the utterance of desperation
with a grim sympathy, when a faint hope dawned upon him.

Not more than a yard above the water was a ledge or shelf in the face of the
precipice. The layer of sandstone immediately over this shelf was evidently
softer than the general mass; and in other days (centuries ago), when it had
formed one level with the bed of the river, it had been deeply eroded. This erosion
had been carried along the cañon on an even line of altitude as far as the
softer layer extended. Thurstane could trace it with his glass for what seemed
to him a mile, and there was of course a possibility that it reached below
the foot of the rapid. The groove was everywhere about twenty feet high, while
its breadth varied from a yard or so to nearly a rod.

Here, then, was a road by which they might perhaps turn the obstacle. The
only difficulty was that while the bed of the river descended rapidly, the shelf
kept on at the same elevation, so that eventually the travellers would come to a
jumping-off place. How high would it be? Could they get down it so as to regain
the stream and resume their navigation? Well, they must try it; there
was no other road. With one eloquent wave of his hand Thurstane pointed out
this slender chance of escape to his comrades.

“Hurray!” shouted Glover, after a long stare, in which the emotions succeeded
each other like colors in a dolphin.

“Can we make the jump at the other end?” asked the lieutenant.

“Reckon so,” chirruped Glover. “Look a here.”

He exhibited a pile of unpleasant-looking matter which proved to be a mass
of strips of fresh hide.

“Hoss skin,” he explained. “Peeled off a mustang. Borrowed it from that
Texan cuss. Thought likely we might want to splice our towline. 'Bout ten

fathom, I reckon; 'n' there's the lariat, two fathom more. All we've got to do
is to pack up, stick our backs under, 'n' travel.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when they commenced their preparations
for making this extraordinary portage. Sunk as they were twenty-five
hundred feet in the bowels of the earth, the sun had already set for them; but
they were still favored with a sort of twilight radiance, and they could count upon
it for a couple of hours longer. Carefully the guns, paddles, and stores were
landed on the marvellous causeway; and then, with still greater caution, the
boat was lifted to the same support and taken to pieces. The whole mass of
material, some two hundred pounds in weight, was divided into three portions.
Each shouldered his pack, and the strange journey commenced.

“Sweeny, don't you fall off,” said Glover. “We can't spare them sticks.”

“If I fall off, ye may shute me where I stand,” returned Sweeny. “I know
better 'n to get drowned and starved to death in wan. I can take care av meself.
I've sailed this a way many a time in th' ould counthry.”

The road was a smooth and easy one, barring a few cumbering bowlders.
To the left and below was the river, roaring, hissing, and foaming through its
chevaux de frise of rocks. In front the cañon stretched on and on until its walls
grew dim with shadow and distance. Above were overhanging precipices and a
blue streak of sunlit sky.

It was quite dusk with the wanderers before they reached a point where the
San Juan once more flowed with an undisturbed current.

“We can't launch by this light,” said Thurstane. “We will sleep here.”

“It'll be a longish night,” commented Glover. “But don't see 's we can
shorten it by growlin'. When fellahs travel in the bowels 'f th' earth, they've got
to follow the customs 'f th' country. Puts me in mind of Jonah in the whale's
belly. Putty short tacks, Capm. Nine hours a day won't git us along any too
fast. But can't help it. Night travellin' ain't suited to our boat. Suthin'
like a bladder football: one pin-prick 'd cowallapse it. Wal, so we'll settle.
Lucky we wanted our blankets to set on. 'Pears to me this rock's a leetle
harder'n a common deck plank. Unroll the boat, Capm? Wal, guess we'd
better. Needs dryin' a speck. Too much soakin' an't good for canvas. Better
dry it out, 'n' fold it up, 'n' sleep on't. This passageway that we're in, sh'd say
it might git up a smart draught. What d'ye say to this spot for campin'? Twenty
foot breadth of beam here. Kind of a stateroom, or bridal chamber. No need
of fallin' out. Ever walk in yer sleep, Sweeny? Better cut it right square off
to-night. Five fathom down to the river, sh'd say. Splash ye awfully,
Sweeny.”

Thus did Captain Glover prattle in his cheerful way while the party made its
preparations for the night.

They were like ants lodged in some transverse crack of a lofty wall. They
were in a deep cut of the shelf, with fifteen hundred or two thousand feet of sandstone
above, and the porphyry-colored river thirty feet below. The narrow strip
of sky far above their heads was darkening rapidly with the approach of night,
and with an accumulation of clouds. All of a sudden there was a descent of
muddy water, charged with particles of red earth and powdered sandstone, pouring
by them down the overhanging precipice.

“Liftinant!” exclaimed Sweeny, “thim naygurs up there is washin' their
dirty hides an' pourin' the suds down on us.”

“It's the rain, Sweeny. There's a shower on the plateau above.”

“The rain, is it? Thin all nate people in that counthry must stand in great
nade of ombrellys.”

The scene was more marvellous than ever. Not a drop of rain fell in the
river; the immense façade opposite them was as dry as a skull; yet here was
this muddy cataract. It fell for half an hour, scarcely so much as spattering
them in their recess, but plunging over them into the torrent beneath. By the
time it ceased they had eaten their supper of hard bread and harder beef, and
lighted their pipes to allay their thirst. There was a laying of plans to regain
the river to-morrow, a grave calculation as to how long their provisions would
last, and in general much talk about their chances.

“Not a shine of a lookout for gittin' back to the Casa?” queried Captain
Glover. “Knowed it,” he added, when the lieutenant sadly shook his head.
“Fool for talkin' 'bout it. How 'bout reachin' the trail to the Moqui country?”

“I have been thinking of it all day,” said Thurstane. “We must give it up.
Every one of the branch cañons on the other bank trends wrong. We couldn't
cross them; we should have to follow them; it's an impassable hell of a country.
We might by bare chance reach the Moqui pueblos; but the probability
is that we should die in the desert of thirst. We shall have to run the river.
Perhaps we shall have to run the Colorado too. If so, we had better keep on to
Diamond creek, and from there push by land to Cactus Pass. Cactus Pass is on
the trail, and we may meet emigrants there. I don't know what better to suggest.”

“Dessay it's a tiptop idee,” assented Glover cheeringly. “Anyhow, if we
take on down the river, it seems like follyin' the guidings of Providence.”

In spite of their strange situation and doubtful prospects, the three adventurers
slept early and soundly. When they awoke it was daybreak, and after
chewing the hardest, dryest, and rawest of breakfasts, they began their preparations
to reach the river. To effect this, it was necessary to find a cleft in the
ledge where they could fasten a cord securely, and below it a footing at the
water's edge where they could put their boat together and launch it. It would
not do to go far down the cañon, for the bed of the stream descended while the
shelf retained its level, and the distance between them was already sufficiently
alarming. After an anxious search they discovered a bowlder lying in the river
beneath the shelf, with a flat surface perfectly suited to their purpose. There,
too, was a cleft, but a miserably small one.

“We can't jam a cord in that,” said Glover; “nor the handle of a paddle
nuther.”

“It 'll howld me bagonet,” suggested Sweeny.

“It can be made to hold it,” decided Thurstane. “We must drill away till
it does hold it.”

An hour's labor enabled them to insert the bayonet to the handle and wedge
it with spikes split off from the precious wood of the paddles. When it seemed
firm enough to support a strong lateral pressure, Glover knotted on to it, in his
deft sailor fashion, a strip of the horse hide, and added others to that until he
had a cord of some forty feet. After testing every inch and every knot, he said:
“Who starts first?”

“I will try it,” answered Thurstane.

“Lightest first, I reckon,” observed Glover.

Sweeny looked at the precipice, skipped about the shelf uneasily, made a
struggle with his fears, and asked, “Will ye let me down aisy?”

“Jest 's easy 's rollin' off a log.”

“That's aisy enough. It's the lightin' that's har-rd. If it comes to rowlin'
down, I'll let ye have the first rowl. I've no moind to git ahead of me betthers.”

“Try it, my lad,” said Thurstane. “The real danger comes with the last
man. He will have to trust to the bayonet alone.”

“An' what'll I do whin I get down there?”

“Take the traps off the cord as we send them down, and pile them on the
rock.”

“I'm off,” said Sweeny, after one more look into the chasm. While the
others held the cord to keep the strain from coming on the bayonet, he gripped
it with both hands, edged stern foremost over the precipice, and slipped rapidly
to the bowlder, whence he sent up a hoot of exultation. The cord was drawn
back; the boat was made up in two bundles, which were lowered in succession;
then the provisions, paddles, arms, etc. Now came the question whether Thurstane
or Glover should remain last on the ledge.

“Lightest last,” said the lean skipper. “Stands to reason.”

“It's my duty to take the hot end of the poker,” replied the officer.

“Loser goes first,” said Glover, producing a copper. “Heads or tails?”

“Heads,” guessed Thurstane.

“It's a tail. Catch hold, Capm. Slow 'n' easy till you get over.”

The cord holding firm, Thurstane reached the bowlder, and was presently
joined by Glover.

“Liftinant, I want me bagonet,” cried Sweeny. “Will I go up afther it?”

“How the dickens 'd you git down again?” asked Glover. “Guess you'll
have to leave your bayonet where it sticks. But, Capm, we want that line.
Can't you shute it away, clost by th' edge?”

The third shot was a lucky one, and brought down the precious cord. Then
came the work of putting the boat into shape, launching it, getting in the stores,
and lastly the voyagers.

“Tight 's a drum yit,” observed Glover, surveying the coracle admiringly.
“Fust time I ever sailed on canvas. Great notion. Don't draw more'n three
inches. Might sail acrost country with it. Capm, it's the only boat ever invented
that could git down this blasted river.”

Glover and Sweeny, two of the most talkative creatures on earth, chattered
much to each other. Thurstane sometimes listened to them, sometimes lost
himself in reveries about Clara, sometimes surveyed the scenery of the cañon.

The abyss was always the same, yet with colossal variety: here and there
yawnings of veined precipices, followed by cavernous closings of the awful sides;
breakings in of subsidiary cañons, some narrow clefts, and others gaping shattered
mouths; the walls now presenting long lines of rampart, and now a succession
of peaks. But still, although they had now traversed the chasm for
seventy or eighty miles, they found no close and no declension to its solemn
grandeur.

At last came another menace, a murmur deeper and hoarser than that of the
rapid, steadily swelling as they advanced until it was a continuous thunder.
This time there could be no doubt that they were entering upon a scene of yet
undecided battle between the eternal assault of the river and the immemorial resistance
of the mountains.

The quickening speed of the waters, and the ceaseless bellow of their charging
trumpets as they tore into some yet unseen abyss, announced one of those
struggles of nature in which man must be a spectator or a victim.