Telling Suarez to pull for all he was worth, Gray, clambered to the stern of the boat and emptied the revolver at what he took to be the black heads of the swimmers.
"Quick! Load it again," he said, and Elsie obeyed with a nimbleness and certainty that were amazing.
The American fired three more shots before he was satisfied that the canoes were untenanted and not cut adrift. They were now leaving the pandemonium behind, and Elsie, bethinking herself of the dog, freed him from that most objectionable muzzle. Joey forthwith awoke the welkin with his uproar, but, although the girl strained her ears for some answering hail, she could detect nothing beyond the bawling of Indians at each other across the narrow creek, and the repeated echoes of the dog"s barking.
About this time Gray began to suspect that the tide was bearing them onward at a remarkable rate. In the somber depths of the cleft or canon it was difficult to discern stationary objects clearly enough to obtain a means of estimating the pace of the stream. But the rapid dying down of the hubbub among the savages gave him cause to think. He asked Suarez to cease pulling. The canoes behind came crowding in on the more solid boat, and an oar held out until it encountered some invisible branch was rudely swept aside. In a word, they were being impelled towards an unknown destination with the silence and gathering speed of a mill-race.
An expert engineer, though his work may have little to do with sea or river, cannot fail to acc.u.mulate a store of theoretical knowledge as to the properties and limitations of water in motion. Gray knew that the quickened impulse of the stream arose from the tidal force exerted in a channel which gradually lessened its width. The boat was traveling at sea level. Therefore, there could be neither rapids nor cataract in front; but the steady rush of the current, now plainly audible, could not be accounted for simply by the effort of the tide to gain a pa.s.sage through a mere by-way, as the boat was now nearly half a mile from the estuary, and the velocity of the current was increasing each moment.
"We must endeavor to reach the bank and hold on to the branches of a tree," he shouted in Spanish. "Down with your heads until the boat strikes, and then try to lay hold of something."
There was no time for explanation. He seized an oar; a powerful stroke swung the boat"s nose round. By chance, he used the starboard oar.
All unknowing he spun a coin for life or death, and life won. They crashed through some drooping foliage and ran into a crumbling bank.
Gray unshipped the oar and jammed it straight down. It stuck between stones at a depth of three feet, and the life-boat was held fast for the time. The canoes hurtled against each other, but were swept aside instantly. When the noise ceased, they plainly heard the swirl of the water. In their new environment, it had the uncanny and sinister hiss of some monstrous snake.
"Everybody happy?" Gray demanded coolly.
"I am clinging to a tree trunk," answered Elsie.
"Bully for you. Make fast with a piece of rope. But be careful to provide a slip-knot, in case we have to sheer off in a hurry. Can you manage that?"
"Quite well."
Elsie was fully aware that the leadership of the expedition had gone from her. She was not sorry; it was in strong hands. Suarez, too, secured a stout branch, and pa.s.sed a rope around it.
"Now, silence! and listen!" said Gray.
They soon detected a curiously subdued clamor from the inner recesses of the cleft. At first almost indistinguishable, it gradually a.s.sumed the peculiar attribute of immense volumes of distant sound, and filled the ear to the exclusion of all else. It was like nothing any of them had heard before; now it recalled the roar of a mighty waterfall, and again its strange melody brought memories of a river in flood. But the dominant note was the grinding noise of innumerable mill-stones. It cowed them all. Even the dog was afraid.
"Guess we tied up just in time," exclaimed Gray, feeling the need of speech. A little sob answered him. Elsie was beginning to admit the sheer hopelessness of her undertaking.
"Now, cheer up, Miss Maxwell," said he. "All the water that is going in must come out by the same road. At the worst, we can skate back the way we came and take our chance. But it will soon be broad daylight, and I"ll answer for it that if Captain Courtenay is yet alive he is not between us and the mouth of the inlet, or he would have contrived some sort of racket to let us know his whereabouts. Now, I propose that our friend in the bows be asked to shin up the cliff and prospect a bit.
He ought to know how to crawl through this undergrowth. Fifty feet higher he will be able to see some distance."
Elsie agreed miserably. She was crushed by the immensity of the difficulties confronting them. Expedients which looked simple beforehand were found lamentably deficient to cope with wild nature on the stupendous scale of this gloomy land. Suarez, too, was very reluctant to leave the boat, but the American adopted a short cut in the argument, offering him the alternative of climbing ash.o.r.e or of being thrown overboard.
So the Argentine adopted the less hazardous method, and climbed to the bank. A splash, and a scramble, and a slight exclamation from Elsie told that the dog had followed. Soon the swish of leaves and the crackling of rotten wood ceased. Suarez might be out of earshot or merely hiding for a time, intending to return with news of an impa.s.sable precipice. There was a crumb of comfort in the absence of the terrier. Joey would either go on or come back to them at once.
Gray felt that the girl was too heart-broken to talk. He listened to the rhythmical chorus of that witches" cauldron in the heart of the defile, and watched the gray light slowly etching a path through the trees, until it touched the fast-running water with a shimmer of silver.
Neither of them knew how long they remained there; at last, a straining and creaking of the boat warned them that the water level was rising and the ropes needed readjusting. It was now possible to see that Elsie had made fast to a fallen tree; its branches were locked among the gnarled roots of the lowermost growth above high-water mark.
Already there was a distinct lessening in the pace of the current, and Gray fancied that the distant rumble was softer. It would not be many minutes before the neighboring rocks were covered; high tide, he knew, was at 3.15 A.M. He forebore to look at his watch, lest the girl should note his action. That would imply the utter abandonment of hope.
It might be that his mind was too taken up with the weird influences of the hour, or that Elsie"s senses were strung to a superhuman pitch. Be that as it may, it was she who sprang to her feet all a-quiver with agitation.
"Do you hear?" she whispered, and her hand clutched Gray"s shoulder with an energy which set his heart beating high. He did not answer.
He had heard no unusual sound, but he was not without faith in her.
"There!" she panted again. "Some one is hailing. Some one cried "Elsie." I am sure of it."
"Guess you"d better toot "Arthur" on the off chance," said Gray.
Almost the last thing she remembered was the sound of her own wild scream. There came back to her a stronger shout, and the bark of a dog. She had a blurred consciousness of a whole troupe of men scrambling down the choked ravine, of glad questions and joyous answers, of a delirious dog leaping on board and yelping staccato a.s.surances that everything was all right in a most wonderful world.
Then she found herself in Courtenay"s arms, and heard him say in a rapture of delight:
"I owe my life to you, dear heart. That is the wonder of it. No need to tell me you ran away from the ship. I know. One kiss, Elsie; then full speed ahead for the _Kansas_. By the Lord, to think of it! You here! At the very gate of the Inferno! Well, one more kiss! Yes, it is I, none other, and fit as a fiddle. Never got a scratch. There, now; I really must see to the crew. We must be ready for the turn of the tide."
CHAPTER XIX
WHEREIN THE KANSAS RESUMES HER VOYAGE
The events of the next hour were shadowy as the dawn to Elsie. She knew that her lover placed men in each of the canoes, that the life-boat itself was crowded, and that it began the seaward journey after the others had started. She followed his explanation that if one of the lighter craft got into difficulties at the Indian barrier, the big, heavy boat would be able to extricate it. But she feared neither Indians nor sea. Had Courtenay proposed to sail away into the Pacific she would have listened with placid approval. She was by his side; that sufficed. For the rest, they lived in the midst of adventures.
What did it matter if they were called on to run the gauntlet of one more ambuscade--or a dozen, if it came to that?
But they sped out of the twilight into the morning glory of the open bay, and never a savage hoot disturbed the echoes. Some of the Alaculofs had dragged a couple of canoes from beneath the trees and raced off toward the village; others had followed a coast path known only to them, while, if there were watchers by the side of that mysterious river which flowed both ways with the tide, they kept a silent vigil, awed by the force arrayed against them.
As the life-boat emerged into the estuary under the vigorous sweep of six ash blades, Elsie"s wondering glance rested on the brown plumpness of a three-quarters naked girl who was gazing at Suarez with wistful, glistening eyes, much as Joey was regarding his master. In the intense, penetrating light of sunrise, the bedaubed and skin-clothed Argentine was the most unlovely object that ever captivated woman. Yet he satisfied the soul of this Fuegian maid, so what more was there to be said?
Courtenay caught the happy little sigh, half laugh, half sob, with which Elsie announced her discovery of the idyl in the canoe.
"We owe a lot to that young person," he said. "None of us could make out a word she uttered when first we saw her. She loses what small amount of Spanish she can speak when she becomes excited, and it was sheer good fortune that some of the crew were with her when she swung herself down the side of the cliff to warn us of our danger; otherwise she might have been shot. I suppose Suarez told you what to expect?"
"You might as well be talking Alaculof yourself for all I can follow what you are saying," murmured Elsie happily.
"Then how did _you_ know where to tie up? _We_ went too far. We lost the boat that way, and my gun as well. We had to jump for it, and it was only the boat"s stout timbers which enabled her to live through that boiling pot in the volcano. The native girl said that no Indian-built craft ever came back."
"Excellent!" said Elsie. "When we reach the ship I shall write down everything you tell me. After a time I shall begin to understand."
Whereupon, Courtenay took thought, and explained that the channel which flowed through that amazing cut in the cliff led to the crater of an extinct volcano, into which the sea poured twenty feet of water each tide. An almost everlasting maelstrom raged within, as the water entered by a side-long channel, and sent a whirlpool spinning with the hands of the clock until the enormous cistern was full, and against them until it was empty. The sailors had taken refuge on a wide, sulphur-coated ledge high above the vortex, and the presence of several skeletons showed that many an unfortunate had sought a last shelter there against pursuit. Every Alaculof knew of this retreat, but few dared approach it, as the roar of the water far below appalled them.
There was only one path; when the hunters closed that their prey was safe. The alternative to capture was death by starvation. The Chileans, and he himself during the past fourteen hours, had subsisted on a bag of dried berries stolen by the girl when she first led the sailors thither.
"Didn"t you see how eager we all were to search the lockers?" he asked.
"But the rascals had cleared every sc.r.a.p when the boat fell into their hands again with the falling tide."
She nestled close to him.
"I saw nothing," she whispered. "My mind held but one thought--that you were alive, though, indeed, I was mourning you as dead. But now I am restored to my senses. I think I can grasp what happened. Did Joey find you?"
"Yes. You can guess my bewilderment when he sprang on top of me. I was lying down; I heard our sentries shouting, but paid no heed. As a matter of fact, Elsie, I, too, had abandoned hope. I could see no chance of escape. Great Heaven! To think of your coming to my rescue!
What made you do it?"
"Please go on. Tell me all. You shall hear my story afterwards."
"Well, I jumped up, and Joey nearly fell into the crater with delight.
I was just in time to save Suarez from being shot. Luckily he was a long way behind the dog, and I recognized his make-up. The guard, who belonged to the original lot, naturally thought he was an Indian. And you ought to have seen that blessed girl skipping around when she set eyes on him. We must give her money enough to fix her up as his wife if the _Kansas_ gets off."