The quickening speed of the waters, and the ceaseless bellow of their charging trumpets as they tore into some yet unseen abyss, announced one of those struggles of nature in which man must be a spectator or a victim.
CHAPTER XXVII.
As Thurstane approached the cataract of the San Juan he thought of the rapids above Niagara, and of the men who had been whirled down them, foreseeing their fate and struggling against it, but unable to escape it.
"We must keep near one wall or the other," he said. "The middle of the river is sure death."
Paddling toward the northern bank, simply because it had saved them in their former peril, they floated like a leaf in the shadows of the precipices, watching for some footway by which to turn the lair of the monster ahead.
The scenery here did not consist exclusively of two lofty ramparts fronting each other. Before the river had established its present channel it had tried the strength of the plateau in various directions, slashing the upper strata into a succession of cañons, which were now lofty and arid gullies, divided from each other by every conceivable form of rocky ruin. Rotundas, amphitheatres, castellated walls, cathedrals of unparalleled immensity, facades of palaces huge enough to be the abodes of the principalities and powers of the air, far-stretching semblances of cities tottering to destruction, all fashions of domes, towers, minarets, spires, and obelisks, with a population of misshapen demons and monsters, looked down from sublime heights upon the voyagers. At every turn in the river the panorama changed, and they beheld new marvels of this Titanic architecture. There was no end to the gigantic and grotesque variety of the commingling outlines. The vastness, the loneliness, the stillness, the twilight sombreness, were awful. And through all reverberated incessantly the defiant clarion of the cataract.
The day was drawing to that early death which it has always had and must always have in these abysses. Knowing how suddenly darkness would fall, and not daring to attempt the unknown without light, the travellers looked for a mooring spot. There was a grim abutment at least eighteen hundred feet high; at its base two rocks, which had tumbled ages ago from the summit, formed a rude breakwater; and on this barrier had collected a bed of coarse pebbles, strewn with driftwood. Here they stopped their flight, unloaded the boat and beached it. The drift-wood furnished them a softer bed than usual, and materials for a fire.
Night supervened with the suddenness of a death which has been looked for, but which is at last a surprise. Shadow after shadow crept down the walls of the chasm, blurred its projections, darkened its faces, and crowded its recesses. The line of sky, seen through the jagged and sinuous opening above, changed slowly to gloom and then to blackness. There was no light in this rocky intestine of the earth except the red flicker of the camp-fire. It fought feebly with the powers of darkness; it sent tremulous despairing flashes athwart the swift ebony river; it reached out with momentary gleams to the nearer facades of precipice; it reeled, drooped, and shuddered as if in hopeless horror. Probably, since the world began, no other fire lighted by man had struggled against the gloom of this tremendous amphitheatre. The darknesses were astonished at it, but they were also uncomprehending and hostile. They refused to be dissipated, and they were victorious.
After two hours a change came upon the scene. The moon rose, filled the upper air with its radiance, and bathed in silver the slopes of the mountains. The narrow belt of visible sky resembled a milky way. The light continued to descend and work miracles. Isolated turrets, domes, and pinnacles came out in gleaming relief against the dark-blue background of the heavens. The opposite crest of the cañon shone with a broad illumination. All the uncouth demons and monsters of the rocks awoke, glaring and blinking, to menace the voyagers in the depths below. The contrast between this supereminent brilliancy and the sullen obscurity of the subterranean river made the latter seem more than ever like Styx or Acheron.