Overland Part 38

We must not forget the Great Canon. The voyagers were amid magnitudes and sublimities of nature which oppressed as if they were powers and princ.i.p.alities of supernature. They were borne through an architecture of aqueous and plutonic agencies whose smallest fantasies would be belittled by comparisons with coliseums, labyrinths, cathedrals, pyramids, and stonehenges.

For example, they circled a bend of which the extreme delicate angle was a jutting pilaster five hundred feet broad and a mile high, its head towering in a sharp tiara far above the brow of the plateau, and its sides curved into extravagances of dizzy horror. It seemed as if it might be a pillar of confinement and punishment for some Afreet who had defied Heaven. On either side of this monster fissures a thousand feet deep wrinkled the forehead of the precipice. Armies might have been buried in their abysses; yet they scarcely deformed the line of the summits. They ran back for many miles; they had once been the channels of streams which helped to drain the plateau; yet they were merely superficial cracks in the huge ma.s.s of sandstone and limestone; they were scarcely noticeable features of the t.i.tanic landscape. From this bend forward the beauty of the canon was sublime, horrible, satanic. Constantly varying, its transformations were like those of the chief among demons, in that they were always indescribably magnificent and always indescribably terrible.

Now it was a straight, clean chasm between even hedges of cliff which left open only a narrow line of the beauty and mercy of the heavens. Again, where it was entered by minor canons, it became a breach through crowded pandemoniums of ruined architectures and forsaken, frowning imageries.

Then it led between enormous pilasters, columns, and caryatides, mitred with conical peaks which had once been ranges of mountains. Juttings and elevations, which would have been monstrous in other landscapes, were here but minor decorations.

Something like half of the strata with which earth is sheathed has been cut through by the Colorado, beginning at the top of the groove with hundreds of feet of limestone, and closing at the bottom with a thousand feet of granite. Here, too, as in many other wonder-spots of the American desert, nature's sculpture is rivalled by her painting. Bluish-gray limestone, containing corals; mottled limestone, charged with slates, flint, and chalcedony; red, brown, and blue limestone, mixed with red, green, and yellow shales; sandstone of all tints, white, brown, ochry, dark red, speckled and foliated; coa.r.s.e silicious sandstone, and red quartzose sandstone beautifully veined with purple; layers of conglomerate, of many colored shales, argillaceous iron, and black oxide manganese; ma.s.sive black and white granite, traversed by streaks of quartz and of red sienite; coa.r.s.e red felspathic granite, mixed with large plates of silver mica; such is the masonry and such the frescoing.

Through this marvellous museum our three spectators wandered in hourly peril of death. The Afreets of the waters and the Afreets of the rocks, guarding the gateway which they had jointly builded, waged incessant warfare with the intruders. Although the current ran five miles an hour, it was a lucky day when the boat made forty miles. Every evening the travellers must find a beach or shelf where they could haul up for the night. Darkness covered destruction, and light exposed dangers. The bubble-like nature of the boat afforded at once a possibility of easy advance and of instantaneous foundering. Every hour that it floated was a miracle, and so they grimly and patiently understood it.

A few days in the canon changed the countenances of these men. They looked like veterans of many battles. There was no bravado in their faces. The expression which lived there was a resigned, suffering, stubborn courage.

It was the "silent berserker rage" which Carlyle praises. It was the speechless endurance which you see in portraits of the Great Frederick, Wellington, and Grant.

They relieved each other. The bow was guard duty; the steering was light duty; the midships off duty. It must be understood that, the great danger being sunken rocks, one man always crouched in the bow, with a paddle plunged below the surface, feeling for ambushes of the stony bushwhackers.

Occasionally all three had to labor, jumping into shallows, lifting the boat over beds of pebbles, perhaps lightening it of arms and provisions, perhaps carrying all ash.o.r.e to seek a portage.

"It's the best canew 'n' the wust canew I ever see for sech a voyage,"

observed Glover. "Navigatin' in it puts me in mind 'f angels settin' on a cloud. The cloud can go anywhere; but what if ye should slump through?"

"Och! ye're a heretic, 'n' don't belave angels can fly," put in Sweeny.

"Can't ye talk without takin' out yer paddle?" called Glover. "Mind yer soundings."

Glover was at the helm just then, while Sweeny was at the bow. Thurstane, sitting cross-legged on the light wooden flooring of the boat, was entering topographical observations in his journal. Hearing the skipper's warning, he looked up sharply; but both the call and the glance came too late to prevent a catastrophe. Just in that instant the boat caught against some obstacle, turned slowly around before the push of the current, swung loose with a jerk and floated on, the water bubbling through the flooring. A hole had been torn in the canvas, and the c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l was foundering.

"Sound!" shouted Thurstane to Sweeny; then, turning to Glover, "Haul up the Grizzly!"

The tub-boat of bearskin was dragged alongside, and Thurstane instantly threw the provisions and arms into it.

"Three foot," squealed Sweeny.

"Jump overboard," ordered the lieutenant.

By the time they were on their feet in the water the Buchanan was half full, and the swift current was pulling at it like a giant, while the Grizzly, floating deep, was almost equally unmanageable. The situation had in one minute changed from tranquil voyaging to deadly peril. Sweeny, unable to swim, and staggering in the rapid, made a plunge at the bearskin boat, probably with an idea of getting into it. But Thurstane, all himself from the first, shouted in that brazen voice of military command which is so secure of obedience, "Steady, man! Don't climb in. Cut the lariat close up to the Buchanan, and then hold on to the Grizzly."

Restored to his self-possession, Sweeny laboriously wound the straining lariat around his left arm and sawed it in two with his jagged pocket-knife. Then came a doubtful fight between him and the Colorado for the possession of the heavy and clumsy tub.

Meantime Thurstane and Glover, the former at the bow and the latter at the stern of the Buchanan, were engaged in a similar tussle, just barely holding on and no more.

"We can't stand this," said the officer. "We must empty her."

"Jest so," panted Glover. "You're up stream. Can you raise your eend? We mustn't capsize her; we might lose the flooring."

Thurstane stooped slowly and cautiously until he had got his shoulder under the bow.

"Easy!" called Glover. "Awful easy! Don't break her back. Don't upset _me_."

Gently, deliberately, with the utmost care, Thurstane straightened himself until he had lifted the bow of the boat clear of the current.

"Now I'll hoist," said the skipper. "You turn her slowly--jest the least mite. Don't capsize her."

It was a Herculean struggle. There was still a ponderous weight of water in the boat. The slight frame sagged and the flexible siding bulged.

Glover with difficulty kept his feet, and he could only lift the stern very slightly.

"You can't do it," decided Thurstane. "Don't wear yourself out trying it.

Hold steady where you are, while I let down."

When the boat was restored to its level it floated higher than before, for some of the water had drained out.

"Now lift slowly," directed Thurstane. "Slow and sure. She'll clear little by little."

A quiet, steady lift, lasting perhaps two or three minutes, brought the floor of the boat to the surface of the current.

"It's wearing," said the lieutenant, cheering his worried fellow-laborer with a smile. "Stand steady for a minute and try to rest. You, Sweeny, move in toward the bank. Hold on to your boat like the devil. If the water deepens, sing out."

Sweeny, gripping his lariat desperately, commenced a staggering march over the cobble-stone bottom, his anxious nose pointed toward a beach of bowlders beneath the southern precipice.

"Now then," said Thurstane to Glover, "we must get her on our heads and follow Sweeny. Are you ready? Up with her!"

A long, reeling hoist set the Buchanan on the heads of the two men, one standing under the bow and one under the stern, their arms extended and their hands clutching the sides. The beach was forty yards away; the current was swift and as opaque as chocolate; they could not see what depths might gape before them; but they must do the distance without falling, or perish.

"Left foot first," shouted the officer. "Forward--march!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

When the adventurers commenced their tottering march toward the sh.o.r.e of the Colorado, Sweeny, dragging the clumsy bearskin boat, was a few yards in advance of Thurstane and Glover, bearing the canvas boat.

Every one of the three had as much as he could handle. The Grizzly, pulled at by the furious current, bobbed up and down and hither and thither, nearly capsizing Sweeny at every other step. The Buchanan, weighing one hundred and fifty pounds when dry, and now somewhat heavier because of its thorough wetting, made a heavy load for two men who were hip deep in swift water.

"Slow and sure," repeated Thurstane. "It's a five minutes job. Keep your courage and your feet for five minutes. Then we'll live a hundred years."

"Liftinant, is this soldierin'?" squealed Sweeny.

"Yes, my man, this is soldiering."

"Thin I'll do me dooty if I pull me arrms off."

But there was not much talking. Pretty nearly all their breath was needed for the fight with the river. Glover, a slender and narrow-shouldered creature, was particularly distressed; and his only remark during the pilgrimage sh.o.r.eward was, "I'd like to change hosses."

Sweeny, leading the way, got up to his waist once and yelled, "I'll drown."

Then he backed a little, took a new direction, found shallower water, and tottled onward to victory. The moment he reached the sh.o.r.e he gave a shrill hoot of exultation, went at his bearskin craft with both hands, dragged it clean out of the water, and gave it a couple of furious kicks.

"Take that!" he yelped. "Ye're wickeder nor both yer fathers. But I've bate ye. Oh, ye blathering jerkin', bogglin' baste, ye!"