Overland Part 36

"We can't jam a cord in that," said Glover; "nor the handle of a paddle nuther."

"It'll howld me bagonet," suggested Sweeny.

"It can be made to hold it," decided Thurstane. "We must drill away till it does hold it."

An hour's labor enabled them to insert the bayonet to the handle and wedge it with spikes split off from the precious wood of the paddles. When it seemed firm enough to support a strong lateral pressure, Glover knotted on to it, in his deft sailor fashion, a strip of the horse hide, and added others to that until he had a cord of some forty feet. After testing every inch and every knot, he said: "Who starts first?"

"I will try it," answered Thurstane.

"Lightest first, I reckon," observed Glover.

Sweeny looked at the precipice, skipped about the shelf uneasily, made a struggle with his fears, and asked, "Will ye let me down aisy?"

"Jest 's easy 's rollin' off a log."

"That's aisy enough. It's the lightin' that's har-rd. If it comes to rowlin' down, I'll let ye have the first rowl. I've no moind to git ahead of me betthers."

"Try it, my lad," said Thurstane. "The real danger comes with the last man. He will have to trust to the bayonet alone."

"An' what'll I do whirl I get down there?"

"Take the traps off the cord as we send them down, and pile them on the rock."

"I'm off," said Sweeny, after one more look into the chasm. While the others held the cord to keep the strain from coming on the bayonet, he gripped it with both hands, edged stern foremost over the precipice, and slipped rapidly to the bowlder, whence he sent up a hoot of exultation.

The cord was drawn back; the boat was made up in two bundles, which were lowered in succession; then the provisions, paddles, arms, etc. Now came the question whether Thurstane or Glover should remain last on the ledge.

"Lightest last," said the lean skipper. "Stands to reason."

"It's my duty to take the hot end of the poker," replied the officer.

"Loser goes first," said Glover, producing a copper. "Heads or tails?"

"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 d.i.c.kens '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 canon.

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 canons, 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 hoa.r.s.er 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 a.s.sault of the river and the immemorial resistance of the mountains.

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 canons, 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 princ.i.p.alities 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 t.i.tanic 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 coa.r.s.e 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 canon 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.

The travellers were awakened in the morning by the trumpetings of the cataract. They embarked and dropped down the stream, hugging the northern rampart and watching anxiously. Presently there was a clear sweep of a mile; the clamor now came straight up to them with redoubled vehemence; a ghost of spray arose and waved threateningly, as if forbidding further pa.s.sage. It was the roar and smoke of an artillery which had thundered for ages, and would thunder for ages to come. It was a voice and signal which summoned reinforcements of waters, and in obedience to which the waters charged eternally.

The boat had shudders. Every spasm jerked it onward a little faster. It flew with a tremulous speed which was terrible. Thurstane, a good soldier, able to obey as well as to direct, knowing that if Glover could not steer wisely no one could, sat, paddle in hand, awaiting orders. Sweeny fidgeted, looked from one to another, looked at the mist ahead, cringed, wanted to speak, and said nothing. Glover, working hard with his paddle, and just barely keeping the coracle bows on, peered and grinned as if he were facing a hurricane. There was no time to have a care for sunken bowlders, reaching up to rend the thin bottom. The one giant danger of the cataract was enough to fill the mind and bar out every minor terror. Its deafening threats demanded the whole of the imagination. Compared with the probability of plunging down an unknown depth into a boiling h.e.l.l of waters, all other peril seemed too trifling to attract notice. Such a fate is an enhancement of the horrors of death.

"Liftinant, let's go over with a whoop," called Sweeny. "It's much aisier."

"Keep quiet, my lad," replied the officer. "We must hear orders."

"All right, Liftinant," said Sweeny, relieved by having spoken.

At this moment Glover shouted cheerfully, "We ain't dead yit There's a ledge."

"I see it," nodded Thurstane.

"Where there's a ledge there's an eddy," screamed Glover, raising his voice to pierce the hiss of the rapid and the roar of the cascade.

Below them, jutting out from the precipitous northern bank, was a low bar of rock over which the river did not sweep. It was the remnant of a once lofty barrier; the waters had, as it were, gnawed it to the bone, but they had not destroyed it. In two minutes the voyagers were beside it, paddling with all their strength against the eddy which whirled along its edge toward the cataract, and tossing over the short, spiteful ripples raised by the sudden turn of the current. With a "Hooroo!" Sweeny tumbled ash.o.r.e, lariat in hand, and struck his army shoes into the crevices of the shattered sandstone. In five minutes more the boat was unloaded and lifted upon the ledge.

The travellers did not go to look at the cataract; their immediate and urgent need was to get by it. Making up their bundles as usual, they commenced a struggle with the intricacies and obstacles of the portage.

The eroded, disintegrated plateau descended to the river in a huge confusion of ruin, and they had to pick their way for miles through a labyrinth of cliffs, needles, towers, and bowlders. Reaching the river once more, they found themselves upon a little plain of moderately fertile earth, the first plain and the first earth which they had seen since entering the canon. The cataract was invisible; a rock cathedral several hundred feet high hid it; they could scarcely discern its lofty ghost of spray.

Two miles away, in the middle of the plain, appeared a ruin of adobe walls, guttered and fissured by the weather. It was undoubtedly a monument of that partially civilized race, Aztec, Toltec, or Moqui, which centuries ago dotted the American desert with cities, and pa.s.sed away without leaving other record. With his field-gla.s.s Thurstane discovered what he judged to be another similar structure crowning a distant b.u.t.te. They had no time to visit these remains, and they resumed their voyage.

After skirting the plain for several miles, they reentered the canon, drifted two hours or more between its solemn walls, and then came out upon a wide sweep of open country. The great canon of the San Juan had been traversed nearly from end to end in safety. When the adventurers realized their triumph they rose to their feet and gave nine hurrahs.