There followed a series of steep pitches, which they descended like the first, unlooping the rope from spike-head after spike-head. The only real difficulty of this part of the descent was the tedious task of carrying the vertical measurement down the slopes at places where even Blake could not find footing to climb out horizontally on either wall of the gorge to obtain a clear drop.
Always, as they descended, the engineer scanned the rocks both above and below, calculating where the gorge bottom could be reascended without a line. Whenever he considered the incline too smooth or too steep for safe footing, he drove in spikes near enough together to be successively lassoed from below with a length of line.
Had not the nature and condition of the rock provided frequent faults and crevices that permitted the driving of spikes, the descent must soon have become impracticable. But the engineer invariably found some chink in which to hammer a spike with his powerful blows. As, time after time, he overcame difficulties so great that his companion could perceive no possible solution, Ashton began to feel himself struggling against a feeling of reluctant admiration.
All his hate could not blind him to the extraordinary mental and physical efficiency displayed by the engineer. Never once did the steely muscles permit a slip or false step, never once did the cool brain miscalculate the next most advantageous movement.
They were now so deep that Blake had to shout his infrequent directions, to be heard above the booming reverberations of the cañon. Half way down they came to a forty-foot cliff. Blake made his preparations, and swung over the edge. Here was an opportunity. Ashton instantly bent over the knot of the rope.
Close before his eyes he saw the clearly outlined shadow of his head. He hesitated and straightened on his knees to stare up at the top of the gorge. He could no longer discern the three down-peering faces, but he knew that they were still there. And the sunrays still pierced down to him between the walls of the gorge. The shadows were farther down, in the lower depths. He must follow and wait.
When he slid to the foot of the cliff, Blake silently cut off the rope. There was still nearly a hundred and fifty feet left for them to use below. But they went down more than a thousand feet before they again had need of it. As Blake had foretold, the lower half of the descent was far less precipitous than the upper. In places the vertical measurements were carried down by rod readings, the level being set without its tripod on the points of rock where the previous readings had been taken. At other places Blake marked out horizontal points ahead on the gorge wall, and climbed to them with the chain.
All the time the reverberations of the cañon were becoming louder. Dark shadows began to gather along one wall of the gorge. The sun was no longer directly in line with the ravine, and they were now far down in the lower depths. Ashton’s knees were beginning to tremble with weakness. They had brought no water, for they were descending to the river. The torment of thirst was added to the torment of his hate. He began to look with fierce eagerness for the opportunity to do his work––to accomplish the deed for which he had descended into this inferno. Then he could go up again, out of the roaring, reverberating hell about him, away from the burning hell within him.
The shadows were creeping out at him from the side of the gorge. The sunshine was going––it was flickering away up the opposite precipices. Now it had gone. All the gorge was somber with shadows. And below were the blue-black depths of the cañon bottom. Dread crept in upon his smoldering hate to sweep across its white-hot coals with chill gusts of fear.
But now they were come to another sheer cliff––the last in the descent. From its foot the gorge bottom inclined easily down the final three hundred feet to its mouth, where the river of the deep roared past along the cañon bed, its foam flashing silvery white through the gloom.
Here at last was the opportunity for which he had waited––here down in these dark shadows where no eye could see––here where no shriek or cry could pierce up to the outer world of light and sunshine through the wild uproar of the angry waters. He awaited the moment, aflame with pent-up fury, shivering with cold dread.
Blake dropped his chain from the cliff-edge and took the last vertical measurement––fifty-three feet. He smiled. The hardest part of the work was almost accomplished. He swung over the edge.
Ashton flung himself on his knees beside the triple knot that held the line fast to its spike. This time he did not hesitate, but began to tug at the rope end with fierce eagerness. He loosened one knot. The next was harder to unfasten. Blake had tied it with utmost secureness. At last it yielded to the tugging of his gloved fingers. He started to loosen the third knot. Suddenly the taut line slackened. With a stifled cry of rage, he paused to peer over the edge. Blake had slipped down the line so rapidly that he was already at the foot of the cliff.
Reaching back, Ashton jerked the rope from the spike-head, to cast it down on the engineer. A glimpse of the flashing water in the cañon bottom gave momentary check to his vengeful impulse. If only he had a drink of that cool water! He was parched; his lips were cracking; in his mouth was the taste of dust. Must he stay up here on the dry rock while Blake went on down beside the foaming river to drink his fill?
As he paused, a doubt clutched his heart in an icy grip. All the way down that devil’s stairway he had been witness to Blake’s extraordinary resourcefulness and tremendous strength. What if he should find a way to clamber up the precipices? He had lowered everything before descending. There was nothing to fling down upon him––no loose rock or stone to topple over and crush him.
Chilled by that doubt, Ashton hesitated, his hands alternately tightening and relaxing their grip on the rope. What if the man should contrive to escape? There seemed no bounds to his ingenuity.... No, he must be followed on down into the cañon and destroyed, else he would escape––he would come up out of this inferno, like the demon he was, and destroy her. He must be followed!... And the water––the cool, refreshing water!
His thirst now seized upon Ashton with terrible intensity. Rage, no less than the laborious exertion of the descent, had dried up his body with its feverish fire. Almost maddened with the torment of his craving, he looped the rope on the spike-head with reckless haste and slid down over the edge of the cliff.
As the line tautened with his weight it gave several inches, but he was too nearly frantic to heed. He slipped down it so swiftly that the strands burned his hands through the tough palms of his gloves. In a few moments his feet were on a level with Blake’s head. He clutched the rope tighter to check his fall. An instant later he dropped heavily on the rock shelf at the cliff foot, and the rope came swishing down after him.
“God!” shouted Blake. Involuntarily he flung back his head and stared up the great gorge to the faraway heights where were waiting his wife and child.
But Ashton neither paused nor looked upward. Rebounding from his fall, he rushed down the slope to the river, with a gasping cry––“Water! water!”
For a time the engineer stood as if stunned, his big fists clenched, his broad chest heaving laboriously. Yet he was far too well seasoned in desperate adventure to give way to despair. Soon he rallied. He lowered his gaze from the heights to examine the cliff and the adjoining walls of the gorge. All were alike sheer and unscalable. The lines about his big mouth hardened with grim determination. He picked up the rope and began winding it about his mid-body above the low-buckled cartridge belt.
He arranged the coils with such care that he did not notice the condition of the end of the line until he had drawn in over eighty feet. Then at last he saw. Though he had not forgotten to wrap the line with canvas where it passed over the cliff edge, he had thought the strands must have been frayed through on a sharp corner of rock. Instead, he found himself staring at the clean-cut string-wrapped rope end that he had knotted to the spike.
For several moments he stood looking at it, his forehead creased in thought. What had become of the knot?... He could think of only one solution to the puzzle. He turned and ga
zed down through the gloom at the dim figure crouched beside the edge of the swirling water.
“Locoed,” he said pityingly––“Locoed.... Poor devil!”
* * *
CHAPTER XXVI
IN THE GLOOM
When the engineer came down to the river, Ashton still crouched low, his dripping head close over the water, as if he was afraid even to look away from it. Blake rinsed out his mouth and stood up to sip slowly from his hat, while looking about at the awesome spectacle of the cañon bottom.
His first glance was at the swift-flowing stream. His eyes brightened and the furrows in his forehead smoothed away. The river was not as formidable as its tumult and foam had threatened. It could be descended by wading at the places where ledges and bowlders along the base of the cañon walls failed to afford safe footing. He glanced up the stupendous precipices at the blue-black ribbon of sky, but only for a moment. His present thought was not of escape from the depths.
He bent over to grip the crouching man by the shoulder and lift him to his feet. Ashton writhed about and glared at him like a trapped wolf.
“Let go!” he snarled. “It was an accident! I didn’t mean to do it!”
“Of course not,” replied Blake, releasing his grip but standing close that he might not have to shout. “It’s all right, old man––my fault. The knot slipped.”
“You own it! You own it’s your fault!” cried Ashton. “You’ve brought me down here into this hell-pit! We can’t get out! Lost! All your fault––yours!”
He made a frantic snatch and jerked the revolver from Blake’s holster. The engineer caught his wrist in an iron grasp and wrenched the weapon from him.
“None of that, old man,” he admonished with a cool sternness that chilled the frenzy of the other like a dash of ice water. “You’re here to do your work, and you’re going to do it. Understand?”
“My work!” repeated Ashton wildly.
“Yes, your work,” commanded Blake, his face as hard as iron. “We’re going to survey Deep Cañon down to the tunnel site. Your work is to carry rod. Do you get that?”
“Down the cañon?––deeper!”
“We can’t get back up here. There’s a place down there beyond the tunnel site where perhaps we can make it up the cañon wall.”
“A place where we––?” shrilled Ashton. “A place––Good God! and you stand here doing nothing!”
He whirled to spring out into the swirling water. Blake was still swifter in his movements. He caught the fugitive by the arm and dragged him back.
“Wait!” he commanded. “We must first carry the levels down to the tunnel site. You hear that? Stick by me, and I’ll pull you through. Try to run, and, by God, I’ll shoot you like a dog!”
The captive glared into the steel-white eyes of the engineer, anger overcoming his panicky fear.
“Let go!” he panted. “Don’t worry! I’ll do my work––I’ll do my work!”
“If you don’t, you’ll never get out of this cañon,” grimly rejoined Blake. He released his hold, and started up the slope, with a curt order: “Come along. We can rod down the slope.”
Ashton followed him, silent and morose. The instrument was screwed to its tripod, and a line of levels from the foot of the last vertical measurement was carried down the slope to the cañon. The last rod reading was on a ledge, three feet above the water, at the corner of the gorge. Blake considered the reading worthy of permanent record. They had measured all the many hundreds of feet down from the top of High Mesa to these profound depths. With his two-pound hammer and one of the few remaining spikes, he chiseled a cross deep in the surface of the black rock.
That mark of the engineer-captain, scouting before the van of man’s Nature-conquering army, was the sign of the first human beings that had ever descended alive to the bottom of Deep Cañon.
When he had cut the cross, Blake took out his Colt’s, and, gazing up the heights, began to fire at slow intervals. Confined between the walls of gorge and cañon, each report of the heavy revolver crashed out above the tumult of the river and ran echoing and reechoing up the stupendous precipices. Yet long before they reached the rim of those towering walls they blurred away and merged and were lost in the ceaseless reverberations of the waters.
Blake well knew that this would happen. But he also knew that the flash of the shot would be distinctly discernible in the gloom of the abyss. As he fired, he scanned the verge of the uppermost precipices. After the fourth shot he ceased firing and flung up his hand to point at the heights.
“Look!” he shouted. “They see! There is the flag!”
Ashton stared up with wide, feverish eyes. From an out-jutting point of rock on the lofty rim he saw a tiny white dot waving to and fro against the blue-black sky. The watchers above had seen the flash of the revolver shots and were fluttering the white flag in responsive signal. Though on the world above the sun beat down its full mid-afternoon flood of light, the two men in the abyss could see stars twinkling in the dark sky around the waving fleck of white.
Blake fired two shots in quick succession, the agreed signal that told the flag was seen. He then calmly seated himself and began to add together the vertical measurements taken during the descent of the gorge. But Ashton groaned and flung himself face downward on the rough stone.
Blake soon finished his sum in addition, and the result brought a smile to his serious face. He checked the figures with painstaking carefulness, and nodded, fully satisfied. Replacing book and pencil in the deep pocket of his shirt, he opened one of the packages of food. When he had laid out enough for a hearty meal, he looked at Ashton. The prostrate man had not stirred.
“Come, Lafe,” he called encouragingly. “Time to eat.”
Ashton lay still and made no response.
Blake raised his voice––“Come! You’re not going to quit. You’re going to eat. You must keep your strength to fight your way through and up out of here––to her!”
Ashton sullenly rose and came to sit down on the rock beside the outspread food. He was silent, but he ate even more heartily than his companion. When they had finished, Blake swung his pack and level on his shoulder, fired one shot, and stepped out into the swift but shallow river. Wading as far downstream as he could see to read the rod in the twilight of the depths, he set up the tripod of his instrument on a rock and took the reading given him by Ashton.
The survey of the cañon itself had begun. Unappalled by the awful height of the mighty precipices on either side, undaunted by the uncertainty of escape, heedless of the gloom of the deep, of the tumult and rush and chill of the icy waters, the engineer boldly advanced to the attack of this abysmal stronghold of Primeval Nature, his square jaw set in grim determination to wrest from these hitherto inviolate depths that which he sought to learn. Whatever might follow, he must and would unlock the secret of the hidden waters. Afterwards might come death by slow starvation or the quick dashing down from some half-scaled precipice. That mattered not now. First must the engineer perform his work,––first must he execute the task that he had set himself for the conquest of the chasm that was likely to prove his tomb.
Vastly different in purpose, yet no less resolute than the engineer, Ashton joined zealously in the grim battle with the abyss––for battle it soon proved to be. Only in places was the subterranean river shallow and easy to wade. More often it foamed in wild fury down steep rapids, to fling itself over ledges into black pools; or, worst of all, it swirled deep and arrowy-swift between fanged rocks where the channel narrowed.
Wading, swimming, leaping from rock to rock, scrambling up and down the steep precipice foot, creeping along narrow shelves,––stubbornly the explorers fought their way deeper through that wild passage. Chilled by the icy waters and bruised by many a slip on loose stones and wet, water-polished rocks, ever they carried the line of levels down alongside the torrent, crossing over and back from side to side, twisting and turning with the twists and bends of the chasm. And at every stand Blake jotted
down the rod readings in his half-soaked book with his pencil and figured the elevation of each turning point before “pulling up” his instrument to move on downstream to the next “set up.”
At the end of every half hour he fired a single shot to signal their progress in the depths to the watchers above. But never once did he stop to look up for the flag. Occasionally he was required to help Ashton through or over some unusually difficult passage. For the most part, however, each fought his own way. The odds were not altogether in favor of the older man. He was hampered by the care of the instrument, which must be shielded from all blows or falls. The rod, on the contrary, served as a staff and support to Ashton, alike in the water and on the rocks.
Some time before sunset the waning light in the cañon bottom became so dim that Blake was compelled to cease work. He took a last reading on a broad shelf of rock well above the surface of the water, joined Ashton on the shelf, and began firing the revolver at five-minute intervals. After the fifth shot he at last perceived the white dot of the flag far above on the opposite brink of the chasm. He fired two shots in quick succession, and calmly sat down to open one of the soaked packages of food.
Ashton did not wait to be bidden to supper. He fell to on the food and ate ravenously. Blake did not check him, though he himself took little and carefully gathered up and returned to the package every scrap of food left at the end of the meal. As Ashton lay back on the rock he squirmed from side to side and groaned. His bruises were so numerous that he could not find a comfortable position.
“Cheer up!” grimly quoted Blake. “The worst is yet to come.”
He stretched himself out on the rock-shelf and, regardless of the sullen resistance of the younger man, drew him into his arms. Chilled to the marrow by his frequent icy drenchings, Ashton was shivering in the cold wind which came down the cañon with the approach of night. But Blake’s massive body and limbs were aglow with abundant vitality. Warmed and sheltered from the wind, the exhausted man relaxed like a child in the strong arms of his companion and quickly sank into the deep slumber of overtaxed nature.
Out of the Depths Page 21
