"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.