When the adventurers commenced their tottering march toward the shore 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 shoreward 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 shore 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!"
Then he splashed into the river, joined his hard-pressed comrades, got his
head under the centre of the Buchanan, and lifted sturdily. In another
minute the precious burden was safe on a large flat rock, and the three
men were stretched out panting beside it. Glover was used up; he was
trembling from head to foot with fatigue; he had reached shore just in
time to fall on it instead of into the river.
"Ye'd make a purty soldier," scoffed Sweeny, a habitual chaffer, like most
Irishmen.
"It was the histin' that busted me," gasped the skipper. "I can't handle a
ton o' water."
"Godamighty made ye already busted, I'm a thinkin'," retorted Sweeny.
As soon as Glover could rise he examined the Buchanan. There was a ragged
rent in the bottom four inches long, and the canvas in other places had
been badly rubbed. The voyagers looked at the hole, looked at the horrible
chasm which locked them in, and thought with a sudden despair of the great
environment of desert.
The situation could hardly be more gloomy. Having voyaged for five days in
the Great Cañon, they were entangled in the very centre of the folds of
that monstrous anaconda. Their footing was a lap of level not more than
thirty yards in length by ten in breadth, strewn with pebbles and
bowlders, and showing not one spire of vegetation. Above them rose a
precipice, the summit of which they could not see, but which was
undoubtedly a mile in height. Had there been armies or cities over their
heads, they could not have discovered it by either eye or ear.
At their feet was the Colorado, a broad rush of liquid porphyry, swift and
pitiless. By its color and its air of stoical cruelty it put one in mind
of the red race of America, from whose desert mountains it came and
through whose wildernesses it hurried. On the other side of this grim
current rose precipices five thousand feet high, stretching to right and
left as far as the eye could pierce. Certainly never before did
shipwrecked men gaze upon such imprisoning immensity and inhospitable
sterility.
Directly opposite them was horrible magnificence. The face of the fronting
rampart was gashed a mile deep by the gorge of a subsidiary cañon. The
fissure was not a clean one, with even sides. The strata had been torn,
ground, and tattered by the river, which had first raged over them and
then through them. It was a Petra of ruins, painted with all stony colors,
and sculptured into a million outlines. On one of the boldest abutments of
the ravine perched an enchanted castle with towers and spires hundreds of
feet in height. Opposite, but further up the gap, rose a rounded
mountain-head of solid sandstone and limestone. Still higher and more
retired, towering as if to look into the distant cañon of the Colorado,
ran the enormous terrace of one of the loftier plateaus, its broad, bald
forehead wrinkled with furrows that had once held cataracts. But language
has no charm which can master these sublimities and horrors. It stammers;
it repeats the same words over and over; it can only _begin_ to tell the
monstrous truth.
"Looks like we was in our grave," sighed Glover.
"Liftinant," jerked out Sweeny, "I'm thinkin' we're dead. We ain't livin',
Liftinant. We've been buried. We've no business trying to _walk_."
Thurstane had the same sense of profound depression; but he called up his
courage and sought to cheer his comrades.
"We must do our best to come to life," he said. "Mr. Glover, can nothing
be done with the boat?"
"Can't fix it," replied the skipper, fingering the ragged hole. "Nothin'
to patch it with."
"There are the bearskins," suggested Thurstane.
Glover slapped his thigh, got up, danced a double-shuffle, and sat down
again to consider his job. After a full minute Sweeny caught the idea also
and set up a haw-haw of exultant laughter, which brought back echoes from
the other side of the cañon, as if a thousand Paddies were holding revel
there.
"Oh! yees may laugh," retorted Sweeny, "but yees can't laugh us out av
it."
"I'll sheath the whole bottom with bearskin," said Glover. "Then we can
let her grind. It'll be an all day's chore, Capm--perhaps two days."
They passed thirty-six hours in this miserable bivouac. Glover worked
during every moment of daylight. No one else could do anything. A green
hand might break a needle, and a needle broken was a step toward death.
From dawn to dusk he planned, cut, punctured, and sewed with the patience
of an old sailor, until he had covered the rent with a patch of bearskin
which fitted as if it had grown there. Finally the whole bottom was
doubled with hide, the long, coarse fur still on it, and the grain running
from stem to stern so as to aid in sliding over the sand and pebbles of
the shallows.
While Glover worked the others slept, lounged, cooked, waited. There was
no food, by the way, but the hard, leathery, tasteless jerked meat of the
grizzly bears, which had begun to pall upon them so they could hardly
swallow it. Eating was merely a duty, and a disagreeable one.
When Glover announced that the boat was ready for launching, Sweeny
uttered a yelp of joy, like a dog who sees a prospect of hunting.
"Ah, you paddywhack!" growled the skipper. "All this work for you. Punch
another hole, 'n' I'll take yer own hide to patch it."
"I'll give ye lave," returned Sweeny. "Wan bare skin 's good as another.
Only I might want me own back agin for dress-parade."
Once more on the Colorado. Although the boat floated deeper than before,
navigation in it was undoubtedly safer, so that they made bolder ventures
and swifter progress. Such portages, however, as they were still obliged
to traverse, were very severe, inasmuch as the Buchanan was now much above
its original weight. Several times they had to carry one half of their
materials for a mile or more, through a labyrinth of rocks, and then
trudge back to get the other half.
Meantime their power of endurance was diminishing. The frequent wettings,
the shivering nights, the great changes of temperature, the stale and
wretched food, the constant anxiety, were sapping their health and
strength. On the tenth day of their wanderings in the Great Cañon Glover
began to complain of rheumatism.
"These cussed draughts!" he groaned. "It's jest like travellin' in a
bellows nozzle."
"Wid the divil himself at the bellys," added Sweeny. "Faix, an' I wish
he'd blow us clane out intirely. I'm gittin' tired o' this same, I am. I
didn't lisht to sarve undher ground."
"Patience, Sweeny," smiled Thurstane. "We must be nearly through the
cañon."
"An' where will we come out, Liftinant? Is it in Ameriky? Bedad, we ought
to be close to the Chaynees by this time. Liftinant, what sort o' paple
lives up atop of us, annyway?"
"I don't suppose anybody lives up there," replied the officer, raising his
eyes to the dizzy precipices above. "This whole region is said to be a
desert."
"Be gorry, an' it 'll stay a desert till the ind o' the worrld afore I'll
poppylate it. It wasn't made for Sweenys. I haven't seen sile enough in
tin days to raise wan pataty. As for livin' on dried grizzly, I'd like
betther for the grizzlies to live on me. Liftinant, I niver see sich harrd
atin'. It tires the top av me head off to chew it."
About noon of the twelfth day in the Great Cañon this perilous and sublime
navigation came to a close. The walls of the chasm suddenly spread out
into a considerable opening, which absolutely seemed level ground to the
voyagers, although it was encumbered with mounds or buttes of granite and
sandstone. This opening was produced by the entrance into the main channel
of a subsidiary one, coming from the south. At first they did not observe
further particulars, for they were in extreme danger of shipwreck, the
river being studded with rocks and running like a mill-race. But on
reaching the quieter water below the rapid, they saw that the branch cañon
contained a rivulet, and that where the two streams united there was a
triangular basin, offering a safe harbor.
"Paddle!" shouted Thurstane, pointing to the creek. "Don't let her go by.
This is our place."
A desperate struggle dragged the boat out of the rushing Colorado into the
tranquillity of the basin. Everything was landed; the boat itself was
hoisted on to the rocks; the voyage was over.
"Think ye know yer way, Capm?" queried Glover, squinting doubtfully up the
arid recesses of the smaller cañon.
"Of course I may be mistaken. But even if it is not Diamond Creek, it will
take us in our direction. We have made westing enough to have the Cactus
Pass very nearly south of us."
As there was still a chance of returning to the river, the boat was taken
to pieces, rolled up, and hidden under a pile of stones and driftwood. The
small remnant of jerked meat was divided into three portions. Glover, on
account of his inferior muscle and his rheumatism, was relieved of his
gun, which was given to Sweeny. Canteens were filled, blankets slung,
ammunition belts buckled, and the march commenced.
Arrived at a rocky knoll which looked up both waterways, the three men
halted to take a last glance at the Great Cañon, the scene of a pilgrimage
that had been a poem, though a terrible one. The Colorado here was not
more than fifty yards wide, and only a few hundred yards of its course
were visible either way, for the confluence was at the apex of a bend. The
dark, sullen, hopeless, cruel current rushed out of one mountain-built
mystery into another. The walls of the abyss rose straight from the water
into dizzy abutments, conical peaks, and rounded masses, beyond and above
which gleamed the distant sunlit walls of a higher terrace of the plateau.
"Come along wid ye," said Sweeny to Glover, "It's enough to give ye the
rheumatiz in the oyes to luk at the nasty black hole. I'm thinkin' it's
the divil's own place, wid the fires out."
The Diamond Creek Cañon, although far inferior to its giant neighbor, was
nevertheless a wonderful excavation, striking audaciously into sombre
mountain recesses, sublime with precipices, peaks, and grotesque masses.
The footing was of the ruggedest, a _débris_ of confused and eroded rocks,
the pathway of an extinct river. One thing was beautiful: the creek was a
perfect contrast to the turbid Colorado; its waters were as clear and
bright as crystal. Sweeny halted over and over to look at it, his mouth
open and eyes twinkling like a pleased dog.
"An' there's nothing nagurish about that, now," he chuckled. "A pataty ud
laugh to be biled in it."
After slowly ascending for a quarter of a mile, they turned a bend and
came upon a scene which seemed to them like a garden. They were in a broad
opening, made by the confluence of two cañons. Into this gigantic rocky
nest had been dropped an oasis of turf and of thickets of green willows.
Through the centre of the verdure the Diamond Creek flowed dimpling over a
pebbly bed, or shot in sparkles between barring bowlders, or plunged over
shelves in toy cascades. The travellers had seen nothing so hospitable in
nature since leaving the country of the Moquis weeks before.
Sweeny screamed like a delighted child. "Oh! an' that's just like ould
Oirland. Oh, luk at the turrf! D'ye iver see the loikes o'that, now? The
blessed turrf! Here ye be, right in the divil's own garden. Liftinant, if
ye'll let me build a fort here, I'll garrison it. I'll stay here me whole
term of sarvice."
"Halt," said Thurstane. "We'll eat, refill canteens, and inspect arms. If
this is Diamond Cañon, and I think there is no doubt of it, we may expect
to find Indians soon."
"I'll fight 'em," declared Sweeny. "An' if they've got anythin' betther
nor dried grizzly, I'll have it."
"Wait for orders," cautioned Thurstane. "No firing without orders."
After cleaning their guns and chewing their tough and stale rations, they
resumed their march, leaving the rivulet and following the cañon, which
led toward the southwest. As they were now regaining the level of the
plateau, their advance was a constant and difficult ascent, sometimes
struggling through labyrinths of detached rocks, and sometimes climbing
steep shelves which had once been the leaping-places of cataracts. The
sides of the chasm were two thousand feet high, and it was entered by
branch ravines of equal grandeur.
The sun had set for them, although he was still high above the horizon of
upper earth, when Thurstane halted and whispered, "Wigwams!"
Perched among the rocks, some under projecting strata and others in
shadowy niches between huge buttresses, they discovered at first three or
four, then a dozen, and finally twenty wretched cabins. They scarcely saw
before they were seen; a hideous old squaw dropped a bundle of fuel and
ran off screeching; in a moment the whole den was in an uproar. Startling
yells burst from lofty nooks in the mountain flanks, and scarecrow figures
dodged from ambush to ambush of the sombre gully. It was as if they had
invaded the haunts of the brownies.
The Hualpais, a species of Digger Indians, dwarfish, miserable, and
degraded, living mostly on roots, lizards, and the like, were nevertheless
conscious of scalps to save. In five minutes from the discovery of the
strangers they had formed a straggling line of battle, squatting along a
ledge which crossed the cañon. There were not twenty warriors, and they
were no doubt wretchedly armed, but their position was formidable.
Sweeny, looking like an angry rat, his nose twitching and eyes sparkling
with rage, offered to storm the rampart alone, shouting, "Oh, the nasty,
lousy nagurs! Let 'em get out of our way."
"Guess we'd better talk to the cusses," observed Glover. "Tain't the
handiest place I ever see for fightin'; an' I don't keer 'bout havin' my
ears 'n' nose bored any more at present."
"Stay where you are," said Thurstane. "I'll go forward and parley with
them."