The rope was untied, and, with the pole in his hand, Sam stood up behind, and again they were sweeping down on the red waters of this wonderful river.
As they drifted between the precipitous banks that seemed to grow higher and higher with the passing of each bend, Sam recalled all he had ever heard or read about the mighty Colorado of the West and its wonderful cañon. He remembered that it was four hundred miles of continuous cañon wall from the point where the Green and Grand Rivers united to the Mormon settlement at Virgin River, where the cañon walls give place to a wide valley.
He shuddered but kept his thoughts to himself, for he wisely reasoned that no good could result from frightening his companions by a true picture of the dangers that lay before them.
For himself he believed that there must be some opening by which they could leave the cañon before traversing its length, and this hope was not darkened with the thought that such an avenue of escape, if used, might not better their condition.
They drifted on till the middle of the afternoon, passing many side cañons which it was impossible to enter, when they suddenly found their raft swept by a whirling current, that boiled about them like the waves of a storm-tossed sea.
They looked up, to find that the towering gray walls had broken into mighty pillars that rose for thousands of feet into the sky.
It was the junction of the Green and Grand Rivers, and the piled up, roaring and irresistible flood was caused by the coming together of the two currents.
The scene that presented itself at this point was indescribably sublime, and even the dangers of the situation were forgotten for the moment in the awful grandeur of their surroundings.
Although Sam still stood bravely up, his pole was useless to control the movements of the raft, which was borne with the speed of a swallow's flight into the whirlpool, about which the waters circled and danced, as if celebrating their meeting in these wild depths.