Jack's increasing discomfort became more than he could bear. "For heaven's sake, don't tell all this," he burst out. "At least not to me. I'm the one you injured. Pull yourself together!"
"It is a relief to get it out," Garrod murmured with a sigh. "I can sleep now."
Jack got up. "Sleep, that's what you need," he said. "Come back to your tent, and lie low for the rest of the day."
"I—I don't want to be alone," stammered Garrod.
"Well, stretch out here in the grass," suggested Jack.
"You won't go away without waking me?" Garrod said anxiously.
"All right," said Jack.
Above the stones of the beach extended a narrow strip of grass, shaded from the sun by thickly springing willows. Behind and above the willows the trail skirted the escarpment of the bank. Garrod crawled into the shade and stretched himself out. Once or twice he started up to look rather wildly if Jack were still there; finally he slept.
Meanwhile Jack, returning to the dugout, took up his poplar braces again, with the instant concentration on the job in hand of which he was capable. Jack's highly practical temperament was at once the source of his strength and his weakness. On the one hand, he conserved his nervous energy by refusing to worry about things not immediately present; on the other hand, his refusal to track these same things down in his mind often left him unprepared for further eventualities. At this moment, while his attentive blue eyes directed his sure hands, he had not altogether ceased to think of the strange things that had happened, but it was only a subconscious current. There was evidence of it in the way his hand occasionally strayed to the pocket of his shirt to make sure the little book was still there.
Jack had pushed the dugout partly into the water. The stern floated in a backwater on the lower side of a little point of stones that jutted out. On this point impinged the descending current, which was deflected out, straight for the opening in the wall of rock, a thousand feet or so downstream. Little could be seen of this opening from above; the first fall hid the white welter below, and the bend in the walls of rock closed up the prospect. It was as if the river came to an end here in a round bay with a stony beach, and rich, green-clad shores. Only the deep, throaty roar from under the wall of rock gave warning that this was really "Hell's Opening."