LOWER DEPTHS
Beetling precipices shut off the direct light of the moonbeams and
left the abyss again in dense darkness long before the coming of the
laggard dawn. Blake slept on, storing up strength for the renewal of
the battle. Yet even he could not outsleep the reluctant lingering of
night. He awoke while the tiny flame of the watchfire still flickered
bright against the inky darkness of the sky.
Ashton had fallen into a fitful doze. The engineer stood up and
silently groped his way to and fro on the shelf of rock, stretching
and limbering his cramped muscles. He wasted no particle of energy;
the moment he had relieved his stiffness he stretched out again. He
lay contemplating that flame of love on the heights until it faded
against the lessening blackness of the sky and the rays of the morning
sun began to angle down the upper precipices.
He rose to take out two portions of food from the single pack in which
he had bound up all the provisions. The portion for Ashton was small;
his own was smaller. He roused the dozing man and placed the larger
share of food in his hand.
"Don't drop it," he cautioned. "That's all I can let you have. We must
go on rations until we can see a way out of this hole."
Ashton ate his meager breakfast without replying. The fire within him
had burned to ashes. He was cold and dull and dispirited. He had
failed. He would have been willing to sit and brood, and wait for God
to answer his prayer.--But his waiting was not to be an inert
lingering in the place where he had failed.
The moment the down-creeping daylight so lessened the gloom of the
depths that Blake could take rod readings, he plunged over into the
stream, with a curtly cheerful command for Ashton to prepare to
follow. Too dejected even to resist, the younger man silently obeyed.
When Blake signaled to him through the dimness, he held the rod on the
last turning-point of the previous day, and lowered himself from the
shelf down into the stream.
The evening before, the water at this point had come up to his waist.
It was now only knee-deep. His surprise was so great that in passing
Blake he broke his sullen silence to remark the fact and ask what
could have caused the change.
"Melting of the snow on the high range," the engineer shouted in
explanation. "Takes time for it to run down the canyon all these miles.
River probably still falling. Will begin to rise about noon. Faster
we get along now, the easier it will be. Hustle!"
Ashton responded mechanically to the will of his commander. For the
time being his own will was almost paralyzed. The reaction from his
long-sustained rage had left him dazed and nerveless. He had sunk into
a state of fatalistic indifference. He moved quickly downstream from
turning-point to turning-point, driven by Blake's will, but with a
heedless recklessness that all Blake's warnings could not check.
Within the first hour he twice stumbled and went under while wading
deep reaches of the river, and once he fell from a ledge, bruising
himself severely and knocking a splinter from the rod. Half an hour
later he lost his footing in descending a swift and narrow place that
would have been impassable at high water. Had not Blake been below him
he would never have come out alive.
The engineer leaped in and dragged the drowning man to safety, after a
desperate struggle with the torrent. But in the wild swirl, both the
food-pack and the rod went adrift. The moment he had rescued his
companion, Blake rushed away downstream, leaping like a goat from rock
to rock. He at last overtook the rod, caught in the eddy of a pool. Of
the pack he could find no trace. He returned to Ashton and silently
handed him the rod.
There was no need for him to admonish. The loss of all the food and
the narrowness of his escape had sobered the younger man. He resumed
his work with a cautious swiftness of movement that avoided all
needless risks yet never hesitated to encounter and rush through the
dangers that could not be avoided. In this he copied Blake.
All the time they were advancing down the angry torrent, deeper and
deeper into its secret stronghold,--creeping, crawling, leaping,
wading, swimming--step by step, turn after turn, wresting from the
abyss that which the engineer was resolved to learn, even though he
should learn, only to perish.
The day advanced. Steadfastly they struggled on down the bed of the
river, twisting and crossing over with the winding course of the
chasm; now between beetling precipices that shut out all sight of the
blue-black sky; now in more open stretches where the Titanic walls
swung apart and the glorious hot sun rays pierced down into the very
depths to warm their drenched bodies and lighten their heavy spirits.
Ashton had long since lost all count of time. His watch had been
smashed in his first fall of the day. But Blake seemed to have an
intuitive sense of time. At fairly regular intervals he fired a shot
to tell the watchers above the extent of their progress. Sometimes the
answering flag-signal could be seen waving from the rim of the canyon.
But in many places those above could not come near the brink to look
over.
The approach of midday found the bruised and weary fighters
struggling through one of the narrowest reaches of the canyon. The
precipices jutted out so far that the lower depths seemed more
cavern than chasm, and the river swirled deep and swift between
sheer, narrow walls. Twice Ashton was swept past what should have
been the next turning-point, and Blake, unable to see the figures on
the rod, had to guess at his readings.
At last the precipices swung apart and showed the sky at a twist in
the canyon's course that was the sharpest of all the turns the
explorers had as yet encountered. As Blake came wading down past
Ashton, along the inner curve of the bend, he stopped and pointed
skywards. Ashton raised his drooping head and peered up at the rim of
the opposite wall. From the brink a dense column of green-wood smoke
was rising into the indigo sky.
"One more set-up," shouted Blake.
Three minutes later he took a reading on the water and on a point of
rock at the angle of the canyon-side around which the river swung in
its sharp curve. Three more minutes, and the two battered fighters
stood together on the last bench of that tremendous line of levels,
with torn and rent clothing, sodden, gaping boots, bodies bruised from
head to foot--bleeding, weary, but victorious! They had finished the
work that Blake had set out to do.
He held up the now-soaked notebook for Ashton to see the last penciled
elevation on the wet paper.
"Two thousand, forty-five!" he shouted. "Over five hundred feet above
that bench in Dry Greek Gulch! Water, electricity!--Dry Mesa shall be
a garden!"
Ashton stared moodily into the exultant face of the engineer.
"Are you sure of that?" he asked. "How do you know that God will let
you climb up out of this hell of stone and water?"
"There's the saying, 'God helps those who help themselves,'" replied
Blake. "I'm going to put up the best fight I can. If that doesn't win
out, I shall at least have the satisfaction of not having quit. If you
wish to pray, do so. The sooner we start the better. From now on, the
water will be rising."
"I prayed last night," said Ashton. He added somberly, "And now we are
both going to the devil."
"No," said Blake, with no less earnestness. "There is no devil--there
is no room for a devil in all the universe. What man calls evil is
ignorance,--his ignorance of those primeval forces of nature which he
has yet to chain; his ignorance of those higher qualities in his own
nature which, if known, would prevent him from wronging others and
would enable him to bring happiness to himself and others."
"You say that!" cried Ashton. "You can mock! You do not believe in
hell!"
Blake smiled grimly. "What do you call this?--But you mean a hell
hereafter. I believe this: If, when we pass into the Unknown, we
continue to exist as individual consciousnesses, then we carry with us
the heaven and the hell that we have each upbuilt for ourselves."
"God will not let you escape," stated Ashton. "You will pass from this
hell of water into the hell of fire and brimstone."
"Have it your own way," said Blake. "I lived one summer in Death
Valley. The other place can't be much hotter."
He climbed up the ledges and planted the level firmly on its tripod
above the high-water mark of the spring floods. He called down to
Ashton: "Hate to leave the old monkey up here; but it will serve as a
memento of our present visit, when we come down again to locate the
tunnel head."
"How can it be that we shall ever come down again?" replied Ashton.
"It is impossible--for we shall never go up."
Blake jumped down the ledges to him and pointed to the column of smoke
on the lofty heights.
"Look there," he said. "That is where we are going, if there is any
possible way to go. An optimist would stand here and wait, certain
that wings would soon sprout for him to fly up; a pessimist would sit
down and quit. An optimist is a fool; a pessimist is a worse fool."
"And which are you?" asked Ashton.
"I am neither. I am a meliorist. I am going to face the facts, and
then fight for all I'm worth. What's more, you're going to do the
same. Come! We've still got some clothes left, the rod for you to use
as a staff, this rope, the revolver, and seventeen cartridges. It's
fortunate we have any. We've got to signal that we are going on down
the canyon, instead of back up."
"We may as well stay and die here. But since you prefer to keep
moving, I have no objections," said Ashton, with ironical politeness.
Blake promptly stepped into the water and led the way to the next
shelf of rock. Here he fired a shot. Going a few yards farther along
the rocks, he fired again. Three times he fired, at intervals of two
minutes. Then the white dot of the flag appeared on the precipice
brink directly up across from him.
"Once more, and we're sure they understand," he said.
Advancing a full hundred yards on down the canyon, he fired the fourth
shot. Very soon the fleck of white flaunted on the rim a little way
beyond them.
"They understand!" cried Blake. "Trust Jenny to use her head! Now
catch your breath and tighten up. We're going to move!"
He started, and Ashton followed close behind. It was the same rough,
fierce game of leaping, crawling, wading, swimming,--battling with the
river, the rocks, the ledges. But now they were no longer checked and
halted by the alternate stoppings for set-ups and turning-points, and
no longer was Blake encumbered with the care of the level. There was
nothing now to hinder or delay them except the natural obstacles of
their wild path down the bed of the torrent.
Blake could give all his thought to picking the best and quickest way
through rapids and falls, over the water-washed rocks and along the
side ledges. And he could give all his great strength to helping his
companion past the hard places. In return Ashton gave such help as he
could to the engineer, many times when a steadying hand or the
outstretched rod rendered easier a descent or the fording of some
swift mill race in the stream.
At the end of the first quarter-mile Blake had fired a shot, and again
at the second quarter. After that he waited longer intervals. He
considered it advisable to husband the few remaining cartridges.
The river was now rapidly rising. But every inch of added depth found
the two fugitives much farther down the canyon. In two hours they
advanced thrice the distance that they had covered in the same time
before noon, and this despite the increasing depth and force of the
river.
The pace was so hot that Ashton was beginning to stumble and slip, but
Blake kept by him and helped him along by word and deed. He asserted
and repeated a dozen times over, that they were nearing the place
where an ascent of the precipices might be possible. At last they
rounded a turn in the winding chasm, and Blake was able to point to a
break in the sheer wall on the Dry Mesa side, where the precipices
were set back one above the other in a Cyclopean stepladder and their
steeply-pitched faces were rough with crevices and shelves.
"Look!" he cried. "There's the place--there's our ladder up from hell
to heaven!"
Ashton soon lowered his weary head. He stared dully downstream to
where a fifty-foot cliff extended across from side to side of the
canyon like a dam.
"Part of the wall slid in," he stated with the simplicity of one who
is nearing exhaustion.
"That shall be our bridge to the ladder," shouted Blake. "It's all
sheer cliff along here at the foot of the break, but the ledges run
down sideways to the top of the cross cliff. We shall soon be lying up
there, high and dry, getting our second wind for the run up the
ladder."
The engineer spoke confidently, and felt what he spoke. But as they
struggled on down the turbulent stream to the cross cliff, the light
left his face. From wall to wall of the canyon the great mass of fallen
rock stretched across the bottom in a sheer-faced barrier, broken only
by a tunnel barely large enough to suck in the swelling volume of the
river.
Blake came down close to the intake, scanning every foot of the cliff
face for a scalable break or crevice. There was none to be found. He
climbed along the cliff foot to a low shelf beside the roaring tunnel,
and stood staring at the opening in deep thought. Even while he
looked, the swelling volume of the river filled the tunnel to its
roof. Blake peered at the fresh watermark twenty feet up the face of
the cliff, and bent down beside Ashton, who had stretched out to rest
on the shelf of rock.
"There's only one thing to it, old man," he said. "We must dive
through that tunnel."
"Through that hole?" gasped Ashton. "No! I've done enough. I shall
stay here."
"To drown like a rat in a rainwater barrel!" rejoined Blake. "Look at
that watermark. The tunnel is now running full. Inside a quarter-hour
the river will be up over this ledge. It will keep rising till it
reaches that mark, and it will not fall until after low water."
"What do I care?" said Ashton hopelessly. "Go to the devil your own
way. I'd rather drown here than in that underground hole. Leave me
alone."
Blake considered a full half minute, looked up the cliff face, and
replied: "Perhaps it's as well. I shall do the best I can. But first I
want to tell you I've wiped out all that past affair. You are another
person from that Lafayette Ashton. We stand here almost face to face
with the Unknown. One or both of us may soon go out into the Darkness.
As we may never meet again, I wish to tell you that you have proved
yourself, even more than I hoped when I saw you come rushing down the
ravine to join me. You have proved yourself a man. Good-by."
He held out his hand. But Ashton turned his face to the wall of rock
and was silent. After a time he heard the sound of Blake's worn heels
on the outer end of the shelf. His ears, attuned to the ceaseless
tumult of the waters, caught the click of the protruded heel-nail
heads. There was a brief pause--then the plunge. He looked about
quickly and saw Blake's hands vanish in the down-sucking eddy where
the swollen waters drew into the now hidden intake of the tunnel.
A cry of horror burst from his heaving chest. Blake had gone--Blake
the iron-limbed, iron-hearted man. He had conquered the river--and now
the wild waters had seized him and were mauling and smashing and
crushing him in the terrible mill of the cavern. Beyond that
underground passage, it might be miles away, the victor would fling up
on some fanged rock a shapeless mass that once had been a man.