“I’ve a hunch,” Don said, as the boys rowed off after fish, “that we
would better land on the east shore, at the point where others have
beached the boats, and try our luck fishing off the bank. That current
looks ugly to me!”
Clay, who was rowing in order to give steerage way, rested a moment and
looked over his shoulder at the water, sweeping toward the west shore
with resistless force. The Colorado river, in passing through the Grand
Canyon, makes many sharp turns in drift because of great rocks which
have tumbled down from the cliffs, and so block the flow, turning it
aside in angry swirls. It was one of these eccentricities the boys
faced.
“There’s where I want to fish!” Clay explained, bending to the oars
again. “Keep her over to the west, and we’ll get a big one in that deep
pit next to the shore. If we ease along with the current, we won’t tip
over. Don’t let the current strike her on the side!”
But the current did strike the boat on the side, struck her like a shot
and whirled her round and round. One oar was twisted out of Clay’s hand,
and Don lost the paddle he was steering with.
“Hang to the boat!” shouted Clay, and Don clung like death to an oarlock
as the boat went over, half filled, righted, and swung toward the west
shore. Striking a rock near the shore, she turned turtle, but the boys
held on, and were dashed out of water where the current beat against a
narrow beach which lay between the shoreline and the cliff.
Clay scrambled up, limping, and Don made his way farther up holding his
right arm with his left hand. The former caught the boat as the wash
moved it toward the current and drew it up on the shore, a
dilapidated-looking craft, with the prow on one side crushed in!
“We are having great luck with rowboats!” Clay said, viewing the craft
whimsically. “We ought to buy ’em by the dozen!”
“The boat be hanged!” Don grunted, rubbing his elbow, “what we need is a
dozen lives! Say, but that was a dump!”
“Cheer up!” grinned Clay. “All we’ve got to do now is to swim a mile or
so across the stream and get back to the _Rambler_! We’re stranded on a
desert coast, with nothing to eat and nothing to catch fish with!”
“Perhaps we can follow the shore up and attract the attention of the
boys,” Don suggested. “I can’t swim across!”
“I don’t believe the _Rambler_ can get over to this shore,” Clay said,
looking over the mass of broken waters. “There’s more than a million big
rocks in there. You know, we kept off this shore when we came up.”
“Well we can walk up and see what the chances are,” Don grunted.
But the lads did not walk up very far before they came to a cliff which
stood out flush with the water, and against which the current thundered
with a sound like the booming of heavy artillery. To the west the canyon
wall rose sheer a thousand feet.
“Right here is where we get ours,” Don exclaimed. “A fly couldn’t climb
up that wall! We’ll have to wait here until the boys look us up.”
“It won’t take them long to find the broken boat!” Clay mourned.
“And they’ll want to know about the fish for dinner!” Don finished, with
a grin.
The cliff which blocked the narrow beach set out from the main wall of
the canyon like the leg of the letter “L,” and the lads sat down in the
angle to dry their clothes in the hot sunshine. In a moment Clay sprang
to his feet and began running up and down the beach.
“That’s the first symptom!” Don grinned. “You’ll be fit for the foolish
house in an hour or two. Go on and play you’re an aeroplane and lift us
both out of this!”
“Where does this cold wind come from?” asked Clay, paying no attention
to the facetious remarks of his chum. “There’s an open passage in the
west wall here! Can’t you feel the current of air?”
“I certainly can,” Don answered. “Perhaps it comes from above!”
“No, sir! It is right down here in this angle—the opening, I mean! And
it is a strong current of air, too, so it must come from some canyon to
the west. The rocks are piled in here in all kinds of shape, anyway.
When the Colorado bored down, it upset things and left lots of layers
standing on end. Here! See that little opening? Well, there she blows!
Little bit of a hole for so much wind.”
“Just like a campaign orator!” Don commented.
Clay looked at his friend reproachfully and crowded into the aperture,
which was formed by two layers of rock, stacked up on end, as he had
before expressed it, much farther apart at the bottom than at the top.
The passage was about four feet in width, and not much more than that in
height. The bottom was covered with a fine sand, laying in wrinkles, and
showing the action of running water.
“You see,” Clay observed, pointing down, “this is a water channel at
certain seasons of the year, so it must lead to some open place.”
“You’re never going in there!” shouted Don. “How do you know what kind
of wild animals you’ll run against?”
“Of course I’m going in,” Clay replied. “For all we know, this hole
leads to a parallel canyon which we can ascend to the vicinity of the
motor boat. If we had our searchlights it would be a picnic.”
But their searchlights were on board the _Rambler_, and so it was
anything but a picnic the boys had following the dark passage. The walls
brushed their elbows at times, and occasionally they ran their heads
full tilt against the roof of the cavern, but the floor, being at times
the bottom of a torrent, was comparatively level, except that it mounted
up at an angle of about twenty-five degrees.
The atmosphere was remarkably pure, for the cool wind which had
attracted Clay’s attention to the opening, continued to sweep through
the passage, but it was dark—wretchedly, miserably, uncannily dark, and
the boys imagined many times that they heard the warning growls of wild
animals or felt the touch of slimy reptiles. Twice they came to places
where their progress seemed blocked, but these were only twists in the
rock, and directly they found their way on again.
Presently, at his very feet, Clay heard the rush of water, and halted.
The boys stood together for a time and listened. It was falling and not
running water they heard. Somewhere in the interior of the mysterious
passage, there was a waterfall.
“If we only had a light!” wailed Don. “We’re likely to break our necks
or get drowned if we go on without one.”
“You just wait a second!” Clay announced, gleefully. “I’ve got a few
matches in a water-tight case! Why didn’t I think of them before? I’ve
carried them with me ever since we left Chicago, and never found use for
them until now. Now, suppose I’ve lost the case!”
There was a moment of suspense, and then the boy’s searching hand came
upon the smooth metal of the match case. There was a chance that the
matches would be worthless, because of the long time they had been kept,
but the boy opened the case and struck one.
A blue flame sprang up, sizzled, wound around the pine stick, and went
out. It was clear that no match flame could live in that breeze unless
better protected. Clay opened his wet coat and struck another. This one,
protected by the coat and the body of the boy, flamed up.
Then, with the stick burning brightly, Clay pushed it ahead, shielding
it with his hands as much as possible. At his feet he saw a current of
water disappearing into a hole in the bottom of the passage. Beyond that
point they would be obliged to wade!
“This accounts for the passage being dry below,” Clay said. “And it
indicates that there’s a passage under this one. The old cliff is
honey-combed with water-bores, I guess!”
The traveling was more difficult now, but the boys kept on, sloshing
through water up to their ankles. At last they saw a speck of light some
distance ahead, and gradually the passage widened out. The water,
however, grew deeper under their feet as they advanced toward the light.
“This is a blooming river, that’s what it is!” Don shouted. “If we had a
line we might catch fish in it!”
“I’ll be swimming in a minute!” Clay called back. “I’m up to my waist
now! And the current is strong enough to lift me off my feet.”
The pitch of the passage was now greater than before, and the water the
lads were wading in came down with a rush. When they got to the entrance
they were obliged to cling to the wall to avoid being carried back into
the subterranean passage.
When the boys came to the full light of day, they saw the sun shining on
a pool of clear, glistening water, which lay in a cup-like depression in
a narrow canyon sloping up to the north. Judging from the time they had
been in the passage, Clay concluded that they were at least six hundred
feet from the river, and not far from two hundred feet above it.
The canyon in which they found themselves was little better than a deep
wrinkle in the massive formation of the west shore, but it seemed to
point the way to an exit up stream. After wading the pool, which was
supplied by springs in the walls, they gained a dry bottom and proceeded
northward, still climbing.
“If this crack in the earth keeps on this way for a mile or two,” Clay
suggested, “we will come out on the wide shelf that divides the west
wall not far south of the old mine. From there we can signal to the boys
who went up there, and they can come in the motor boat and get us. We
never can swim across. In the first place, it is too far; and in the
second, the current is too strong.”
“You heard the story Case and Alex told about the sunburst on the wall?”
asked Don.
“I thought that rather fishy!” Clay replied.
“We’ll soon have a chance to find out whether it is or not,” Don
continued, “for we’ll come out on the shelf near the place they
described—if we come out on the river bank at all.”
“But we’d be too close to the sunburst and the ‘X’ to see them,” Clay
remarked. “You have to look at such large things from a distance in
order to discern them at all.”
“If we can get there some day by ten o’clock,” Don hastened to say, “we
can mark where the line of sunlight lies, and that will help some. But,”
he added, with a frown, “I guess we’re not going to get out to the river
wall by following this old scratch in the earth! Here’s where it turns
to the west! Now, what about it?”
“It may bring us to the top, anyway!” Clay said, encouragingly.
But it did not bring them to the top, for directly it ran into a cavern
not unlike that which the boys had passed through! Disgusted and
disheartened, the lads took to the tunnel and pressed on in the
darkness. The only satisfaction they felt was that they were still going
up.
“If this pitch keeps on,” Don declared, “we’ll come out at the very top
before long!”
“We’re not far from some top now,” Clay replied, “for it is getting
lighter in here, and the light comes from the roof!”
But this was true for only a short distance. It soon became dark in the
passage again. After a time, still ascending, the passage turned to the
east, narrowed, and then the boys heard the rush of the river.
“We’re getting there!” Don shouted. “Look out there!” as he peered out
of the hole. “There’s the river, and there’s the old mine, and there’s
the shelf of rock above which they saw the sunburst!”
“That’s all right,” grumbled Clay, “but if we drop out of this hole
we’ll fall into the river. The door to this blooming cave doesn’t open
out on the shelf! And it isn’t a very big door at that!”
“I’ll bet we’re in the mine!” cried Don.
“No wonder it was never found, then, if people had to reach it the way
we did!” Clay exclaimed. “Say!” he went on, in a moment, “let me get to
that opening again. I wonder if we can’t climb up out of it! I’ve seen
such places! The shelf seems to be only a few feet away, and we may be
able to gain it if we can creep on a wall like flies!”
“I can!” Don laughed. “Let me get out and show you!”
But Clay was half out of the narrow entrance, clinging to points of rock
with his fingers, digging his toes into crevices which were too shallow
for much of a hold.
“Can you make it?” Don called out, anxious and afraid for his chum.
“Sure I can! Wait until I get up on the shelf and I’ll help you out of
the passage! And, say, there’s the mine dump away up to the north, and
some one on it! I believe it is Alex and Tom. Yes, and there’s the
banker! They are looking through field glasses!”
“Give me a hand!” cried Don. “I want to be in this procession myself.
Look there,” the boy added, as he stepped up on the shelf of rock, “they
are motioning to us to stand aside! Do you know what that means? It
means that we are standing on the line between them and the sunburst or
the big ‘X.’ I reckon we’ve just come out of the mine!”
“Hello!” came a call from across the great chasm.
Clay put his hands to his mouth and called back:
“Hello yourself! We’ve found the mine!”
“Where’s your fish?” shouted Tom. “Where’s the f-i-s-h!”
“Fill your pockets with gold and jump over!” Alex shouted.
“Send the boat after us!” Don called back.
Alex made a trumpet of his hands and shouted back:
“I’ve just been up on the cliff looking for the _Rambler_. She’s gone!
There’s no sign of her anywhere. Where’s the little boat?”
“Busted!” Clay called back. “Wrecked! smashed!”
“Then you’ll have to swim!” Alex decided. “And you’ll have to be quick
about it, for there’s a lot of natives climbing up on that shelf who
don’t look very good to me.”