Still Jim Part 13

Charlie's purpose was to work down the river, surveying as he went until he found a level where the river would flow through a tunnel out onto the valley. And this level, too, must be at a point where construction work was possible. The river was incredibly rough and treacherous. From the first they packed everything in waterproof bags. The canvas canoes were impractical. The river was full of hidden rock and by the third day the second canoe was torn to pieces and they were depending on rafts made from the air mattresses.

After the canoes were gone, they spent practically all the daylight in the water, swimming or wading and towing or pus.h.i.+ng the mattresses. The water was very cold but they were obliged to work so hard that they scarcely felt the chill until they made camp at night. Jim discovered that a transit could be used in a cauldron of water or on a peak of rock where a slip meant instant death or clinging to steep walls that threatened rock slide at the misplacing of a pebble.

One arduous task was the locating of a camp at night. The second night in the camp they were lucky. They found a broad ledge in a spot that at first seemed hopeless, for the blank walls appeared here almost to meet above the deep well of water. There was a little driftwood on the ledge and they had a fire. The following two nights they were less fortunate.

The best they could find were chaotic heaps of fallen rock on which to lay their mattresses, and they slept with extreme discomfort.

The fifth day was a black day. They were swimming slowly behind their laden mattresses through deep, smooth black water when, without warning, the river curved and swept over a small fall into heavy rapids.

Instantly the mattresses were whirling like chips. The two men fought like mad to tow them to a rock ledge, the only visible landing place the crevice had to offer. But long before this haven was reached the mattresses were torn to shreds and Jim and Charlie were glad to reach the ledge with their surveying instruments and two bags of "grub." Here they sat dripping and exhausted. It was nearly dark. Night set in early in the canyon. They dared not try to look for a better camping ground that night. The ledge was just large enough for the two of them, with what remained of their dunnage.

Charlie grinned. "Welcome to our city. Well, it's as good as a Pullman berth at that."

"And no harder to dress on," said Jim, standing up carefully and beginning to peel off his wet clothes. "I guess if we wring these duds out and rub with alcohol, they won't feel so cold."

Charlie rose and began to undress gingerly. "You can stand up to make your toilet," he said, "which is more than the Pullman offers you."

They ate a cold canned supper and afterward, as they sat s.h.i.+vering, Jim said, "If we fail to locate the dam site, no one will have any sympathy with our troubles."

"We will find it," said Charlie with the calm certainty he never had lost. "Jupiter looks as big as a dinner plate down here. Sometimes when I look at the stars I wonder what is the use of this kind of work."

Jim looked up at the stars which seemed almost within hand touch. Their nearness was an unspeakable comfort to the two in the crevice. He spoke slowly but with unusual ease. Charlie Tuck had grown very near to him in the past few days.

"I've had a feeling," he said, "ever since we actually got down here and on the job, that I'm doing the thing I've always been intended to do. I don't know how I got that feeling because I've always lived in towns."

"I feel that way every time I go out exploring," answered Tuck. "I can stand the draughting board just so long and then I break loose. I suppose someone has got to do these jobs and there is always someone willing to take the responsibility. Kipling calls it being a Son of Martha. Do you know those verses?"

"No," said Jim. "I'd like to hear them."

Charlie chuckled. "Me reciting Kipling is like hearing a 'co-ed yell'--it's the only poem I know, though, and here goes. The Sons of Martha

'--say to the Mountains, Be ye removed! They say to the lesser floods, run dry!

Under their rods are the rocks reproved. They are not afraid of that which is high.

Then do the hilltops shake to their summits, then is the bed of the deep laid bare, That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They do not preach that their G.o.d will rouse them a little before the nuts break loose, They do not teach that His pity allows them to leave their work whenever they choose.

As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand, Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long in the land.

Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat, Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that.

Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed, But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in their common need.'"

The two men sat in silence after Charlie had finished until he said: "If I were you I'd read Kipling a good deal. He's good food for a man of your type. People don't realize what their comforts cost. I hope that when I die it will be on a Son of Martha job. I'm built that way. My people were New Englanders, then middle west pioneers, and now here I am, still breaking the wilderness."

Jim sat with his heart swelling with he knew not what great dream. It was the divine fire of young sacrifice, the subtle sense of devotion that has made men since the world began lay down their lives for the thing not seen with the eye.

"I wish you'd teach me those verses," said Jim. "We've got to keep awake or roll off the ledge."

And so the night pa.s.sed.

The next day the way was unspeakably difficult. They made progress slowly and heavily, clambering from rock to rock, clinging to the walls, fighting through rapids. It was past mid afternoon when they ran a level in a spot of surpa.s.sing grandeur. A rock slide had sent a great heap of stone into the river. Close beside this they set the transit. Forward the river swept smoothly round a curve. Back, the two looked on a magnificent series of flying b.u.t.tresses of serrated granite, their bases guarding the river, their tops remotely supporting the heavens. The b.u.t.tresses nearest the rock heap and on opposite sides of the river were not two rods apart.

They ran the levels carefully and then looked at each other in silence.

Then they made another reading and again looked at each other. Then they packed the transit into its rubber bag, sat down on the rock heap and gazed at the marching, impregnable line of b.u.t.tresses.

"It will be even higher than the Green Mountain and a hundred times more difficult to build," said Charlie, softly.

"She'll be a wonder, won't she!" exclaimed Jim. "The Makon dam. It will be the highest in the world."

"Granite and concrete! Some beauty that! Eternal as the hills!" said Charlie. "We will make camp and finish the map here."

They lay long, looking at the stars that night. "Some day," said Jim, "there will be a two hundred feet width of concrete wall right where we are lying. Doesn't it make you feel a little hollow in your stomach to think that you and I have decreed where it shall be?"

"Yes," said Charlie. "It's a good spot, Manning. I hope I get a chance to lay out the road down here. They will have to blast it out of the solid granite. It will eat money up to make it."

"Let me in on it, won't you," pleaded Jim.

"Well, slightly!" exclaimed Charlie. "Now for a good night's sleep. We ought to be out in three days. That will make ten days in all, just what I planned."

Jim hardly knew Charlie the next day. No college freshman on his first holiday ever acted more outrageously. He sang ancient college songs that reverberated in the canyon like yells on a football field. He stood solemnly on his head on the top of rock pinnacles. He crowned himself and Jim with wreaths made of water cress that he found on a tiny sandy beach. When they were obliged to take to the water he pretended that he was an alligator and made uncouth sounds and lashed the water with the grub bag in lieu of a tail.

Late in the afternoon, while they were swimming through a whirlpool, he insisted on giving Jim a lecture on the gentle art of bee-hunting as he had seen it practiced in Maine.

"Now we will pretend that I am the bee!" he shouted at Jim. "You will admit that I look like one! I am drunk with honey and I hang to the comb thus!"

He caught a point of rock with one hand and lazily waved the other.

"This is my proboscis," he explained.

"For heaven's sake, be careful!" yelled Jim. "This is no blooming ten-cent show! Keep both hands on the rock and climb up for a rest."

Charlie suddenly went white. "G.o.d! I've got cramp!" he screamed. "Both legs. Help me, Manning!"

He struggled to get his free hand on the rock, but the water tore at him like a ravening beast and he lost his hold. Jim swam furiously after him. The white head showed for a moment, then disappeared around a turn of the wall.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BROKEN SEAL

"When I was young I thought the world was made for love. Now I know that love made the world."

MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

How he pa.s.sed the night that followed Jim never was sure. He knew that he fought his way down stream until long after darkness set in. Then, utterly exhausted, bleeding and bruised, he crawled up onto a rock under the wall and lay dripping and s.h.i.+vering until dawn.

He watched the light touch the far top of the crevice, saw the azure strip of the sky appear and then with a deep groan he forced himself to eat from his grub bag and started hurriedly on down the river. The stream was much deeper below the point of the accident, with several large falls. Jim worked his way along carefully, swimming or floating for the most part, for the walls for many miles offered not even a hand-hold nor did they once give back in beach or eddy.

The loneliness was appalling. The hards.h.i.+p of the work was astonis.h.i.+ngly increased, robbed of Tuck's unfailing cheerfulness and faith. There was one moment when, toward sunset, Jim's strength almost failed him. The walls were rougher now. He had found a hand-hold but no place for the night. He clung here until his exhausted arms were able to endure no more.