A CLOSE CALL
I had a nice time of it, looking for specimens. There is a fascination
about the search for some rare or precious stone.
You feel that the next step may bring it under your eye or that you may
overturn some stones and find it hidden underneath.
I moved along carefully, keeping my eyes intent in their search among
the small broken rocks and rounded pebbles. Suddenly my eye caught a
clear glitter and I stooped and picked up a beautiful crystal, with its
sharp cut sides and water clearness. A little later I picked up a green
stone that looked like jade, through it was not so clear. My last
specimen was a smoky topaz of mild, dark transparency.
I had been longer in my search than I realized, for I was so intent and
interested that I did not note how time was passing.
"All aboard, Jo," Jim yelled. "Hurry or you will be left."
Tom was already pulling up the bow anchor and Jim stood ready to hoist
the one at the stern.
"All right," I called back.
Then I stooped to look at a peculiar stone. I heard a cry of alarm and
glanced up.
"For heaven's sake, Jo!" was the startled cry that reached my ears.
It was all that Jim could say. I needed no warning. The boat was
drifting away from the shore, carried by the current rapidly towards the
outer river.
If I could not reach it, I was absolutely lost. The boat could not
return and I was shut in by inaccessible cliffs. There was just one
thing to do.
I took a short run forward and sprang out in the river as far as I could
in the direction of the drifting boat. Jim and Tom were doing all they
could, but it was impossible for one oar to effectively hold against the
current.
Jim had his hands full with the steering sweep. As soon as I lit in the
icy river,--my leap must have been eighteen feet,--I struck out
desperately for the boat. The current helped me, but it seemed to be
carrying the craft on faster than I did.
It was terrible, I had to catch it or my death was certain. Nothing
could have saved me. "The Captain" seemed as remote and unreachable as
though the length in feet that separated us had been miles.
If you have ever chased after a train that was gathering momentum every
second as it pulls from the station, a train that you feel you must
catch, you can have a faint inkling of how I felt. Still only a faint
idea, for there was no later train for me.
I had to fight back a blinding fear and panic. If my heart had become
cold like my body I should have not had the slightest chance. I was a
strong swimmer and in my desperation I actually pulled up two strokes on
her.
Then she reached a swifter current and pulled away from me rapidly. I
struggled on blindly, though I knew I was lost. A mist was before my
eyes and I was conscious of nothing but a straining, strangling,
struggling sensation.
Then my hand instinctively grasped something, and I held on with the
clutch of desperation. It was a rope. I felt myself being drawn toward
the boat. I had sense enough left to help myself onto the craft, then I
collapsed.
I came out of it, in a few minutes and found myself lying alongside the
cabin. For a second I did not realize where I was. I heard the roar of
the river all around and saw the great walls of red sandstone towering
up and up, almost shutting out the sky.
Then I saw Jim at the steering oar and Tom laboring at the bow oar, and
it all came over me. I grew suddenly weak as I realized the narrowness
of my escape and I clutched the boards and tried to shut out the sound
of the river that seemed like a hungry and devouring animal that for a
moment had been balked of its prey.
"How are you now, Jo?" yelled Jim, anxiously. "We can't do anything for
you for a bit; we are in the rapids."
"I'll be all right in a minute," I answered in a hollow voice that I
scarcely recognized as my own.
I decided that the best thing that I could do was to get to work at the
oars and warm up, for I was chilled through and through to the very
bone.
I staggered to my place and after I had pulled for a few minutes my
blood began to circulate and I felt better and in a short time I was
pretty well recovered, but I dared not let my mind dwell on the escape
that I had just had.
That evening we made a cheerless camp, not being able to run out of the
canyon and had to tie up at a place that was nothing but a narrow shelf
of rock with a few tough and stunted bushes growing on it.
A grey rain, began to come down steadily into the canyon, the first that
we had experienced, and we decided to sleep on the boat.
"Why did you let that boat get away?" was the first question I asked.
"It wasn't our fault," explained Jim. "It happened this way. When Tom
pulled up the bow anchor the strain was too much on the other rope. It
had become worn, I guess, and it parted near the stone."
"That was the rope that was trailing behind, I happened to grasp it and
that was all that saved me. It was that close," I shuddered.
"No more talk about it to-night," said Jim, "you need a good sleep."
Jim rolled up in his blankets on deck, with a tarpaulin over him. While
Tom and I lay under the cabin, with our extremities sticking out, but
covered with canvas. We managed to feel quite comfortable and cozy with
the rain coming down gently on the roof over our heads.
We were shut in and felt protected from the storm; and the roar of the
river that swept by in the darkness only lulled us to sleep for we had
become as used to it as a sailor does to the sound of the sea. Jim
seemed to be perfectly comfortable under his tarpaulin and being on the
deck of his beloved yacht, as he called his creation, he was thoroughly
contented.
The next morning was grey and the rain was still falling but it seemed
warmer than ordinarily and we put our clothes in the cabin to keep them
dry and it was fun too, as the rain came down in a regular shower bath.
We shoved out into the stream and were soon racing down between the
narrow walls of Dark Canyon, as we called it. Guiding the boat, and
dodging rocks was fast becoming second nature to us and our muscles,
those that we had not used much before, were becoming hard and bunchy as
rocks.
Jim's work at the steering oar was the best all-round exercises, as it
took in every muscle in his body as he stood bringing the sweep back and
then shoving it from him as the boat needed to be guided this way or
that.
He had developed great power and control and the sweep had become a live
part of the boat just as the tail of a fish guides it naturally through
the water with an instinctive wave, this way or that.
Tom and I often took the sweep with several hours of exercise at a time,
but when the rapids became very dangerous Jim was always at the helm. It
was a pleasure to see his sinewy form as it bent to the guiding oar,
with a wary glance ahead every now and then.
By noon we ran out of the Dark Canyon and the river broadened out, the
walls became lower and stood further back from the stream than at any
point we had yet passed.
It seemed to give us breathing space after being cramped so long in
narrow walls. We also left the storm behind with its dark grey masses
piled up on the cliffs of the canyon and the wind was stirring the vapor
around and around between the narrow walls as though the storm was
boiling there.
The sun had come out with all the hot, intense brilliancy of the desert
atmosphere. The river seemed plated with the thin silver of the sun and
its current was moving lazily along at about four miles an hour.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Tom, "but it's fine to have the sun again after
being buried alive in those canyons."
"It's nice to loaf along like this too," I said, "after sliding down
hill at forty miles an hour for several hundred miles."
"Better get all our wet duds out," put in Jim, "and hang them in the
rigging until they get dry."
We did this and then we took it easy for several hours. I laid down on
the deck with my head on one of the saddles gazing up into the blue sky
and basking in the sun.
We felt like sailors who have been through days of storm and who run
into a calm in which they can sit on deck and mend their clothes and
absorb the sun into their frozen systems.
We had the whole afternoon of this restful drifting and made a good camp
in a comparatively open place.
"Let's climb to the top of the cliffs and have a look out," proposed
Jim.
It was not particularly hard and we enjoyed having a chance to climb
once more. In an hour we reached the top.
"What a splendid view," cried Jim.
It certainly was. The mountains that we had seen first in the distance,
stood out with clear distinctness in their marvelous symmetry and sharp
outlines, but robed in a mystery of blue enchantment. We saw nearer to
us the wide landscape of the plateau land.