“The cowards!” she breathed, panting in indignation.
“I wish we could find a name in some language that would describe them,” said he; “I’ve not been able to satisfy myself with anything that English offers. No matter. The next thing that I knew I was being drenched with icy water. It was splashing over my head and running down my face, and the restorative 196 qualities of it has not been overrated by young ladies who write stories about fainting beauties for the magazines, I can hereby testify. It brought me around speedily, although I was almost deaf on account of a roaring, which I attributed to the return circulation in my battered head, and sickened by an undulating, swirling motion by which I seemed to be carried along.
“I felt myself cramped, knees against my chin, and struggled to adjust my position more comfortably. I couldn’t move anything but my hands, and exploration with them quickly showed me that I was in a box, rather tight on sides and bottom–one of those tongue-and-groove cases such as they ship dry goods in–with the top rather open, as if it had been nailed up with scraps. The water was splashing through it and drenching me, and I knew in a flash, as well as if they had told me what they were going to do, what they had done. They had carted me to the river and thrown me in.”
“The cañon! The cañon!” said she, shuddering and covering her face with her hands. “Oh, that terrible water–that awful place!”
“But I am here, sitting beside you, with the sun, which I never hoped to see again, shining on my face,” he smiled, stroking her hair comfortingly, as one might assuage the terror of a child.
Agnes lifted her head in wondering admiration.
“You can speak of it calmly!” she wondered, “and you went through it, while it gives me a chill of fear 197 even to think about it! Did you–come to shore before you entered the cañon?”
“No; I went through it from end to end. I don’t know how far the river carried me in that box. It seemed miles. But the cañon is only two miles long, they say. The box floated upright mainly, being pretty well balanced by my weight in the bottom, but at times it was submerged and caught against rocks, where the current held it and the water poured in until I thought I should be drowned that way.
“I was working to break the boards off the top, and did get one off, when the whole thing went to pieces against a rock. I was rolled and beaten and smashed about a good bit just then. Arms were useless. The current was so powerful that I couldn’t make a swimming-stroke. My chief recollection of those few troubled moments is of my arms being stretched out above my head, as if they were roped there with the weight of my body swinging on them. I supposed that was my finish.”
“But you went through!” she whispered, touching him softly on the arm as if to recall him from the memory of that despairing time.