CHAPTER XXVII
LOWER DEPTHS
Beetling precipices shut off the direct light of the moonbeams andleft the abyss again in dense darkness long before the coming of thelaggard dawn. Blake slept on, storing up strength for the renewal ofthe battle. Yet even he could not outsleep the reluctant lingering ofnight. He awoke while the tiny flame of the watchfire still flickeredbright against the inky darkness of the sky.
Ashton had fallen into a fitful doze. The engineer stood up andsilently groped his way to and fro on the shelf of rock, stretchingand limbering his cramped muscles. He wasted no particle of energy;the moment he had relieved his stiffness he stretched out again. Helay contemplating that flame of love on the heights until it fadedagainst the lessening blackness of the sky and the rays of the morningsun began to angle down the upper precipices.
He rose to take out two portions of food from the single pack in whichhe had bound up all the provisions. The portion for Ashton was small;his own was smaller. He roused the dozing man and placed the largershare of food in his hand.
"Don't drop it," he cautioned. "That's all I can let you have. We mustgo on rations until we can see a way out of this hole."
Ashton ate his meager breakfast without replying. The fire within himhad burned to ashes. He was cold and dull and dispirited. He hadfailed. He would have been willing to sit and brood, and wait for Godto answer his prayer.--But his waiting was not to be an inertlingering in the place where he had failed.
The moment the down-creeping daylight so lessened the gloom of thedepths that Blake could take rod readings, he plunged over into thestream, with a curtly cheerful command for Ashton to prepare tofollow. Too dejected even to resist, the younger man silently obeyed.When Blake signaled to him through the dimness, he held the rod on thelast turning-point of the previous day, and lowered himself from theshelf 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 passingBlake he broke his sullen silence to remark the fact and ask whatcould have caused the change.
"Melting of the snow on the high range," the engineer shouted inexplanation. "Takes time for it to run down the canyon all these miles.River probably still falling. Will begin to rise about noon. Fasterwe get along now, the easier it will be. Hustle!"
Ashton responded mechanically to the will of his commander. For thetime being his own will was almost paralyzed. The reaction from hislong-sustained rage had left him dazed and nerveless. He had sunk intoa state of fatalistic indifference. He moved quickly downstream fromturning-point to turning-point, driven by Blake's will, but with aheedless recklessness that all Blake's warnings could not check.
Within the first hour he twice stumbled and went under while wadingdeep reaches of the river, and once he fell from a ledge, bruisinghimself severely and knocking a splinter from the rod. Half an hourlater he lost his footing in descending a swift and narrow place thatwould have been impassable at high water. Had not Blake been below himhe would never have come out alive.
The engineer leaped in and dragged the drowning man to safety, after adesperate struggle with the torrent. But in the wild swirl, both thefood-pack and the rod went adrift. The moment he had rescued hiscompanion, Blake rushed away downstream, leaping like a goat from rockto rock. He at last overtook the rod, caught in the eddy of a pool. Ofthe pack he could find no trace. He returned to Ashton and silentlyhanded him the rod.
There was no need for him to admonish. The loss of all the food andthe narrowness of his escape had sobered the younger man. He resumedhis work with a cautious swiftness of movement that avoided allneedless risks yet never hesitated to encounter and rush through thedangers that could not be avoided. In this he copied Blake.
All the time they were advancing down the angry torrent, deeper anddeeper into its secret stronghold,--creeping, crawling, leaping,wading, swimming--step by step, turn after turn, wresting from theabyss that which the engineer was resolved to learn, even though heshould learn, only to perish.
The day advanced. Steadfastly they struggled on down the bed of theriver, twisting and crossing over with the winding course of thechasm; now between beetling precipices that shut out all sight of theblue-black sky; now in more open stretches where the Titanic wallsswung apart and the glorious hot sun rays pierced down into the verydepths to warm their drenched bodies and lighten their heavy spirits.
Ashton had long since lost all count of time. His watch had beensmashed in his first fall of the day. But Blake seemed to have anintuitive sense of time. At fairly regular intervals he fired a shotto tell the watchers above the extent of their progress. Sometimes theanswering 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 lookover.
The approach of midday found the bruised and weary fightersstruggling through one of the narrowest reaches of the canyon. Theprecipices jutted out so far that the lower depths seemed morecavern than chasm, and the river swirled deep and swift betweensheer, narrow walls. Twice Ashton was swept past what should havebeen the next turning-point, and Blake, unable to see the figures onthe rod, had to guess at his readings.
At last the precipices swung apart and showed the sky at a twist inthe canyon's course that was the sharpest of all the turns theexplorers had as yet encountered. As Blake came wading down pastAshton, along the inner curve of the bend, he stopped and pointedskywards. Ashton raised his drooping head and peered up at the rim ofthe opposite wall. From the brink a dense column of green-wood smokewas 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 ofrock at the angle of the canyon-side around which the river swung inits sharp curve. Three more minutes, and the two battered fightersstood together on the last bench of that tremendous line of levels,with torn and rent clothing, sodden, gaping boots, bodies bruised fromhead to foot--bleeding, weary, but victorious! They had finished thework that Blake had set out to do.
He held up the now-soaked notebook for Ashton to see the last penciledelevation on the wet paper.
"Two thousand, forty-five!" he shouted. "Over five hundred feet abovethat bench in Dry Greek Gulch! Water, electricity!--Dry Mesa shall bea 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 letyou climb up out of this hell of stone and water?"
"There's the saying, 'God helps those who help themselves,'" repliedBlake. "I'm going to put up the best fight I can. If that doesn't winout, I shall at least have the satisfaction of not having quit. If youwish to pray, do so. The sooner we start the better. From now on, thewater will be rising."
"I prayed last night," said Ashton. He added somberly, "And now we areboth going to the devil."
"No," said Blake, with no less earnestness. "There is no devil--thereis no room for a devil in all the universe. What man calls evil isignorance,--his ignorance of those primeval forces of nature which hehas yet to chain; his ignorance of those higher qualities in his ownnature which, if known, would prevent him from wronging others andwould enable him to bring happiness to himself and others."
"You say that!" cried Ashton. "You can mock! You do not believe inhell!"
Blake smiled grimly. "What do you call this?--But you mean a hellhereafter. I believe this: If, when we pass into the Unknown, wecontinue to exist as individual consciousnesses, then we carry with usthe heaven and the hell that we have each upbuilt for ourselves."
"God will not let you escape," stated Ashton. "You will pass from thishell of water into the hell of fire and brimstone."
"Have it your own way," said Blake. "I lived one summer in DeathValley. The other place can't be much hotter."
He climbed up the ledges and planted the level firmly on its tripodabove the high-water mark of the spring floods. He called down toAshton: "Hate to leave the old monkey up h
ere; but it will serve as amemento of our present visit, when we come down again to locate thetunnel 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 smokeon the lofty heights.
"Look there," he said. "That is where we are going, if there is anypossible way to go. An optimist would stand here and wait, certainthat wings would soon sprout for him to fly up; a pessimist would sitdown 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, andthen fight for all I'm worth. What's more, you're going to do thesame. Come! We've still got some clothes left, the rod for you to useas a staff, this rope, the revolver, and seventeen cartridges. It'sfortunate we have any. We've got to signal that we are going on downthe canyon, instead of back up."
"We may as well stay and die here. But since you prefer to keepmoving, I have no objections," said Ashton, with ironical politeness.
Blake promptly stepped into the water and led the way to the nextshelf of rock. Here he fired a shot. Going a few yards farther alongthe rocks, he fired again. Three times he fired, at intervals of twominutes. Then the white dot of the flag appeared on the precipicebrink 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 fourthshot. Very soon the fleck of white flaunted on the rim a little waybeyond them.
"They understand!" cried Blake. "Trust Jenny to use her head! Nowcatch 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 theriver, the rocks, the ledges. But now they were no longer checked andhalted by the alternate stoppings for set-ups and turning-points, andno longer was Blake encumbered with the care of the level. There wasnothing now to hinder or delay them except the natural obstacles oftheir wild path down the bed of the torrent.
Blake could give all his thought to picking the best and quickest waythrough rapids and falls, over the water-washed rocks and along theside ledges. And he could give all his great strength to helping hiscompanion past the hard places. In return Ashton gave such help as hecould to the engineer, many times when a steadying hand or theoutstretched rod rendered easier a descent or the fording of someswift mill race in the stream.
At the end of the first quarter-mile Blake had fired a shot, and againat the second quarter. After that he waited longer intervals. Heconsidered it advisable to husband the few remaining cartridges.
The river was now rapidly rising. But every inch of added depth foundthe two fugitives much farther down the canyon. In two hours theyadvanced thrice the distance that they had covered in the same timebefore noon, and this despite the increasing depth and force of theriver.
The pace was so hot that Ashton was beginning to stumble and slip, butBlake kept by him and helped him along by word and deed. He assertedand repeated a dozen times over, that they were nearing the placewhere an ascent of the precipices might be possible. At last theyrounded a turn in the winding chasm, and Blake was able to point to abreak in the sheer wall on the Dry Mesa side, where the precipiceswere set back one above the other in a Cyclopean stepladder and theirsteeply-pitched faces were rough with crevices and shelves.
"Look!" he cried. "There's the place--there's our ladder up from hellto heaven!"
Ashton soon lowered his weary head. He stared dully downstream towhere a fifty-foot cliff extended across from side to side of thecanyon like a dam.
"Part of the wall slid in," he stated with the simplicity of one whois nearing exhaustion.
"That shall be our bridge to the ladder," shouted Blake. "It's allsheer cliff along here at the foot of the break, but the ledges rundown sideways to the top of the cross cliff. We shall soon be lying upthere, high and dry, getting our second wind for the run up theladder."
The engineer spoke confidently, and felt what he spoke. But as theystruggled on down the turbulent stream to the cross cliff, the lightleft his face. From wall to wall of the canyon the great mass of fallenrock stretched across the bottom in a sheer-faced barrier, broken onlyby a tunnel barely large enough to suck in the swelling volume of theriver.
Blake came down close to the intake, scanning every foot of the cliffface for a scalable break or crevice. There was none to be found. Heclimbed along the cliff foot to a low shelf beside the roaring tunnel,and stood staring at the opening in deep thought. Even while helooked, the swelling volume of the river filled the tunnel to itsroof. Blake peered at the fresh watermark twenty feet up the face ofthe cliff, and bent down beside Ashton, who had stretched out to reston the shelf of rock.
"There's only one thing to it, old man," he said. "We must divethrough that tunnel."
"Through that hole?" gasped Ashton. "No! I've done enough. I shallstay here."
"To drown like a rat in a rainwater barrel!" rejoined Blake. "Look atthat watermark. The tunnel is now running full. Inside a quarter-hourthe river will be up over this ledge. It will keep rising till itreaches that mark, and it will not fall until after low water."
"What do I care?" said Ashton hopelessly. "Go to the devil your ownway. I'd rather drown here than in that underground hole. Leave mealone."
Blake considered a full half minute, looked up the cliff face, andreplied: "Perhaps it's as well. I shall do the best I can. But first Iwant to tell you I've wiped out all that past affair. You are anotherperson from that Lafayette Ashton. We stand here almost face to facewith 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 provedyourself, even more than I hoped when I saw you come rushing down theravine 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 rockand was silent. After a time he heard the sound of Blake's worn heelson the outer end of the shelf. His ears, attuned to the ceaselesstumult of the waters, caught the click of the protruded heel-nailheads. There was a brief pause--then the plunge. He looked aboutquickly and saw Blake's hands vanish in the down-sucking eddy wherethe swollen waters drew into the now hidden intake of the tunnel.
A cry of horror burst from his heaving chest. Blake had gone--Blakethe iron-limbed, iron-hearted man. He had conquered the river--and nowthe wild waters had seized him and were mauling and smashing andcrushing him in the terrible mill of the cavern. Beyond thatunderground passage, it might be miles away, the victor would fling upon some fanged rock a shapeless mass that once had been a man.