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 rug; 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 de 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 at 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 whirl 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.