Part 8 (1/2)
It fascinated me in a terrible way. I thought Death looked like that.
Even now I am afraid I could not swim long in clear waters with those fearful colors under me. I am sure they found Ophelia floating like a ghastly lily in such a place.
Filled with a shadow of the old childish dread, I looked up to the austere summit of the Sentinel. Scarred and haggard with time it caught the sun. I thought of how long it had stood there just so, under the intermittent flas.h.i.+ng of moon and sun and star, since first its flinty peak had p.r.i.c.ked through the hot spume of prehistoric seas.
Fantastic reptiles, winged and finned and fanged, had basked upon it--grotesque, tentative vehicles of the Flame of Life! And then these flashed out, and the wild sea fell, and the land arose--hideous and naked, a steaming ooze fetid with gasping life. And all the while this scarred Sentinel stared unmoved. And then a riot of giant vegetation all about it--divinely extravagant, many-colored as fire. And this too flashed out--like the impossible dream of a G.o.d too young. And the Great Change came, and the paradox of frost was in the world, stripping life down to the lean essentials till only the sane, capable things might live. And still the t.i.tan stared as in the beginning. And then, men were in the land--gaunt, terrible, wolf-like men, loving and hating. And La Verendrye forged past it; and Lewis and Clark toiled under it through these waters of awful quiet. And then the bull boats and the mackinaws and the packets. And all these flashed out; and still it stood unmoved.
And I came--and I too would flash out, and all men after me and all life.
I viewed the colossal watcher with something like terror--the aspect of death about its base and that cynical glimmer of sunlight at its top. I flung the throttle open, and we leaped forward through the river hush.
I wanted to get away from this thing that had seen so much of life and cared so little. It depressed me strangely; it thrust bitter questions within the charmed circle of my ego. It gave me an almost morbid desire for speed, as though there were some place I should reach before the terrible question should be answered against me.
We fled down five or six miles of depressingly quiet waters. Once again the wall rocks closed about us. We seemed to be going at a tediously slow pace, yet the two thin streams of water rushed hissing from prow to stern. A strange mood was upon me. Once when I was a boy and far from home, I awoke in the night with a bed of railroad ties under me, and the chill black blanket of the darkness about me. I wanted to get up and run through that d.a.m.ned night--anywhere, just so I went fast enough--stopping only when exhaustion should drag me down. And yet I was afraid of nothing tangible; hunger and the stranger had sharpened whatever blue steel there was in my nature. I was afraid of being still!
Were you ever a homesick boy, too proud to tell the truth about it?
I felt something of that boy's ache as we shot in among the wall rocks again. It was a psychic hunger for something that does not exist. Oh, to attain the terrible speed one experiences in a fever-dream, to get somewhere before it is too late, before the black curtain drops!
To some this may sound merely like the grating of overwrought nerves.
But it is more than that. All religions grew out of that most human mood. And whenever one is deeply moved, he feels it. For even the most matter-of-fact person of us all has now and then a suspicion that this life is merely episodic--that curtain after curtain of darkness is to be pierced, world after world of consciousness and light to be pa.s.sed through.
Once more the rocks took on grotesque shapes--utterly ultra-human in their suggestiveness. Those who have marveled at the Hudson's beauty should drop down this lonesome stretch.
We shot through the Elbow Rapids at the base of the great Hole-in-the-wall Rock. It was deep and safe--much like an exaggerated mill-race. It ran in heavy swells, yet the day was windless.
In the late afternoon we shot the Dead Man's Rapids, a very turbulent and rocky stretch of water. We went through at a freight-train speed, and began to develop a slight contempt for fast waters. That night we camped at the mouth of the Judith River on the site of the now forgotten Fort Chardon. We had made only ninety-eight miles in four days. It began to appear that we might be obliged to finish on skates!
We were up and off with the first gray of the morning. We knew Dauphin Rapids to be about seventeen miles below, and since this particular patch of water had by far the greatest reputation of all the rapids, we were eager to make its acquaintance.
The engine began to show unmistakable signs of getting tired of its job.
Now and then it barked spitefully, had half a notion to stop, changed its mind, ran faster than it should, wheezed and slowed down--acting in an altogether unreasonable way. But it kept the screw humming nevertheless.
Fortunately it was going at a mad clip when we sighted the Dauphin.
There was not that sibilance and thunder that had turned me a bit gray inside at first sight of the Eagle. The channel was narrow, and no rocks appeared above the surface. But speed _was_ there; and the almost noiseless rolling of the swift flood ahead had a more formidable appearance than that of the Eagle. Rocks above the surface are not much to be feared when you have power and a good rudder. But we drew about twenty-two inches of water, and I thought of the rocks under the surface.
I had, however, only a moment to think, for we were already traveling a good eighteen miles, and when the main swirl of the rapids seized us, we no doubt reached twenty-five. I was grasping the rudder ropes and we were all grinning a sort of idiotic satisfaction at the amazing spurt of speed, when----
Something was about to happen!
The Kid and I were sitting behind the engine in order to hold her screw down to solid water. Bill, decorated with a grin, sat amids.h.i.+ps facing us. I caught a pink flash in the swirl just under our bow, and then _it happened_!
The boat reared like a steeple-chaser taking a fence! The Kid shot forward over the engine and knocked the grin off Bill's face! Clinging desperately to the rudder ropes, I saw, for a brief moment, a good three-fourths of the frail craft thrust skyward at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Then she stuck her nose in the water and her screw came up, howling like seven devils in the air behind me! Instinctively, I struck the spark-lever; the howling stopped,--and we were floating in the slow waters below Dauphin Rapids.
All the cargo had forged forward, and the persons of Bill and the Kid were considerably tangled. We laughed loud and long. Then we gathered ourselves up and wondered if she might be taking water under the cargo.
It developed that she wasn't. But one of our grub boxes, containing all the bacon, was missing. So were the short oars that we used for paddles.
While we laughed, these had found some convenient hiding-place.
We had struck a smooth bowlder and leaped over it. A boat with the ordinary launch construction would have opened at every seam. The light springy tough construction of the _Atom_ had saved her. Whereat I thought of the Information Bureau and was well pleased.