"Yes," continued Professor Pludder musingly, "there it lies, three thousand feet deep. There is the Arkansas, along whose banks we used to play, with its golden waters now mingling feebly with the mighty flood that covers them. There is the schoolhouse and the sandy road where we ran races barefoot in the hot summer dust. There is your father's house, and mine, and the homes of all our early friends—and where are they? Would to God that I had not been so blind!"
"But there was another not so blind," said the President, with something of the condemnatory manner of his former speech.
"I know it—I know it too well now," returned the professor. "But do not condemn me, George, for what I did not foresee and could not help."
"I am sorry," said the President sadly, "that you have awakened these old memories. But I do not condemn you, though I condemn your science—or your lack of science. But we can do nothing. Let us speak of it no more."
The weather was wonderful, considering what had so recently occurred. No clouds formed in the sky, there was only a gentle breeze stirring, at night the heavens glittered with starry gems, and by day the sun shone so hotly that awnings were spread over those whose duties required them to be employed outside the shelter of the cabin. The improvised propeller and rudder worked to admiration, and some days they made as much as eighty miles in the twenty-four hours.
At length, on the fourteenth day of their strange voyage, they caught sight of a curiously shaped "pike" that projected above the horizon far to the west. At the same time they saw, not far away toward the north and toward the south, a low line, like a sea-beach.
"We are getting into shallow water now," said Professor Pludder. "I have been following the course of the Arkansas in order to be sure of a sufficient depth, but now we must be very careful. We are close to the site of Las Animas, which is surrounded with land rising four thousand feet above sea-level. If we should get aground there would be no hope for us. That pike in the distance is Pike's Peak."
"And what is that long line of beach that stretches on the north and south?" asked the President.
"It is the topographic line of four thousand feet," replied the professor.
"And we shall encounter it ahead?"