Lost in the Canon Part 14

The rope was untied, and, with the pole in his hand, Sam stood up behind, and again they were sweeping down on the red waters of this wonderful river.

As they drifted between the precipitous banks that seemed to grow higher and higher with the pa.s.sing of each bend, Sam recalled all he had ever heard or read about the mighty Colorado of the West and its wonderful canon. He remembered that it was four hundred miles of continuous canon wall from the point where the Green and Grand Rivers united to the Mormon settlement at Virgin River, where the canon walls give place to a wide valley.

He shuddered but kept his thoughts to himself, for he wisely reasoned that no good could result from frightening his companions by a true picture of the dangers that lay before them.

For himself he believed that there must be some opening by which they could leave the canon before traversing its length, and this hope was not darkened with the thought that such an avenue of escape, if used, might not better their condition.

They drifted on till the middle of the afternoon, pa.s.sing many side canons which it was impossible to enter, when they suddenly found their raft swept by a whirling current, that boiled about them like the waves of a storm-tossed sea.

They looked up, to find that the towering gray walls had broken into mighty pillars that rose for thousands of feet into the sky.

It was the junction of the Green and Grand Rivers, and the piled up, roaring and irresistible flood was caused by the coming together of the two currents.

The scene that presented itself at this point was indescribably sublime, and even the dangers of the situation were forgotten for the moment in the awful grandeur of their surroundings.

Although Sam still stood bravely up, his pole was useless to control the movements of the raft, which was borne with the speed of a swallow's flight into the whirlpool, about which the waters circled and danced, as if celebrating their meeting in these wild depths.

CHAPTER XIII.-WHIRLED AWAY.

As the raft was being swept into the whirlpool, Ike and Wah Shin sent up a shriek of alarm that rose high above the roar of the waters, and Maj crouched down lower on the blankets and moaned piteously.

Ulna sat in his accustomed place. He did not make a movement, nor did the expression of his face change as they were being whirled to what seemed certain death.

As nothing could be done to avert the impending catastrophe, Sam uttered a prayer, drew in his pole to save himself from being swept off and then sat as calmly and stoically down as if he were a young brave.

There was a central vortex about which the waters swept with the speed of a mill-stream, and for this point-as if forced on by an irresistible power, the raft plunged.

It seemed like going down a hill on a sled. Once fairly under way there was nothing to stop it.

With one quick glance from the center of the whirlpool to the pillars piercing the sky, Sam closed his eyes expecting the next instant would be the last.

But instead of rushing down to death, he was called back to an interest in his surroundings by feeling a peculiarly soothing, swinging sensation in the raft.

He opened his eyes and looked about him, and to his unutterable surprise they were being swept about the mighty whirlpool, like a ball at the end of a string in a strong man's hand.

Nearer and nearer to the center, until it seemed that the fraction of a second must bring the fatal plunge, and then the raft would be suddenly flung to the outer edge of the whirlpool again.

"Golly!" exclaimed Ike, as he looked about him and winked very fast, "dis am curus."

"Too muchee, swing, swing!" cried Wah Shin, as the raft hung again on the edge of the vortex, only to be hurled a second time to the outer edge.

This swinging was at first a decidedly pleasant sensation, but soon it made the pa.s.sengers on the raft giddy and then quite sick.

It was only by keeping their eyes shut that they could command their senses.

A half an hour of this whirling to the center and being thrown back to the edge continued, though it seemed much longer to the tortured occupants of the raft, and Sam spoke his thoughts rather than addressed any of his companions when he said:

"Will this go on forever?"

"It do look to me powahful-like's if we was a-gwine to sikle round dis yar place foheber an' eber, amen," said Ike.

Sam looked up again at the sky, and the crimson hue of the clouds told him that the sun would soon sink in the upper world and that darkness would soon come to add to their trials.

He felt that whether the raft was swallowed up or continued to swing in that giddy dance till morning would make but little difference to himself or his companions, for in either case death would come before morning.

His brave heart grew heavy, as if the darkness of descending night were falling on it.

He thought of his dead mother, thought of the imprisoned father, whom he had set out so heroically to save, and the death that threatened was only awful to him because he was to see his father nevermore.

While these thoughts were running through his mind he felt a different movement in the raft. This was followed by a cheer from Ike and Wah Shin and the loud barking of the dog.

Sam looked quickly up.

Joy! joy! In some inexplicable way the raft had been hurled so far beyond the circle of the whirlpool's power as to be caught by the current and carried into the Colorado, which here begins its journey under that name, for the Gulf of California.

Even Ulna was roused from his usual stoicism by the change. Pointing to the right, where in the twilight a low peninsula could be seen jutting into the river, he called to Sam:

"Let us steer for that point. I think we can make a landing there."

"All right," replied Sam with his habitual cheerfulness.

Ulna now took up his own pole, and after much effort they succeeded in getting the raft to the low point, and here, without difficulty, they made a landing.

As there was neither tree nor rock to tie to they pulled the raft high up on the strip of beach, and then looked around, but without success, for the means to make a fire.

It was too dark to see ten feet away, so they sat on the rocks after making the discovery that what they supposed to be a peninsula was really an island.

But they made another discovery at the same time that was destined to affect their progress very seriously, and that was that one-half the provisions had in some way been pushed or slipped from the raft; but they were lost, and hunger, or rather, starvation was only a few days off.

They ate a little of their remaining provisions and then spread the blankets on the low, damp ground.

Sam Willett had a military idea of the value of discipline. Having begun with having guards at night, he determined to keep it up till the end.

The wisdom of this precaution was shown before another sun came to banish the shadows.

About an hour before daylight Ulna, who was then watching, discovered that the flood was rising around them, and hastily awoke his companions.

They sprang up to find the water roaring about them, and Sam, holding the raft to keep it from floating off, ordered the others to bundle up the blankets and get all the things on board.

As soon as this was done they pushed the raft into deeper water, got on board and were at once swept away by the current.

Such trials would have crushed the spirits of any but the bravest, and with a less resolute leader than Sam, despair would have made the others indifferent to their surroundings.

While it was yet as dark as midnight in the canon, they could look up and see pink streaks in the far-off sky that told them the light of another day was again flushing the upper world.