CHAPTER XIX
WE START
The next few days were as busy as the preceding ones, except that the work was not as heavy.
When we went down to the river in the morning we found Jim busily at work. He was bending over, driving a nail in a board on the side and I struck him fairly with a carefully aimed clod of earth.
"h.e.l.lo, commodore, how are you this morning?" I inquired. "Were you seasick last night?"
"What do you beach combers want?" asked the commodore severely. "I haven"t anything for you to eat."
"We want work," said Tom.
"Come aboard and I"ll give you all you want," was the reply.
"Did she hold all right last night, Jim?" I asked.
"Steady as a scow," he replied.
"What are you going to do to-day?" Tom inquired.
"You and Jo can work on the side boards," he replied, "and I will make the oars."
So we went cheerily about our work, feeling that in another day we would finish the job.
"How many miles do you suppose we will make a day?" I asked.
"That depends on the current," replied Jim. "The captain said that an old trapper told him that in some places the river went over twenty miles an hour."
"That"s as fast as some trains," Tom said.
"Of course it averages much below that," continued Jim, "Probably it is going ten miles by here."
"We ought to make a hundred miles a day in some places, then," I said.
"You can"t tell; sometimes we will have to walk," responded Jim.
"Walk!" exclaimed Tom. "How"s that?"
"Well, climb would be the better word," he explained, "because we will come to rapids, where we will have to let it down by ropes while we are climbing along the cliffs."
"You might just as well try to hold a dozen runaway horses as that boat going down a steep rapid," protested Tom.
"That"s so," said Jim and his face clouded as he thought it over. "Never mind, I"ll back this craft to go through. "The Captain" is no egg sh.e.l.l of a boat. All we will have to do is to hold on. You can"t sink her and I tell you she"s put together to stay."
"How do you think she will act in the current, being so much broader in the beam than at the bow?" asked Tom.
"You see if she isn"t easier to steer than a flat bottomed scow," said Jim. "The way she is cut under fore and aft will help a whole lot. Then the logs being hollowed out makes her more buoyant."
The evening of the third day after this conversation found us ready to embark the next morning. All our supplies were aboard. What was perishable we had put in the deck house which was a little aft of the center.
It was made as near water tight as possible. The cracks between the boards we had filled in with pitch taken from the pine trees. In this house we stored our provisions, which we had put into boxes that we had made from boards that had come down in the drift.
Our axes and other carpenter tools were fixed securely by strips of leather into which the blades and handles fitted. Nothing was left to roll around at hazard.
We knew to a certainty that we would have fierce rapids to run and sometimes we would be awash from stern to stern. Our rifles had places fixed for them on the outside of the deck house, which was covered with tarpaulin to make it as completely water-tight as possible.
Now everything was finished and we stood surveying our boat with pardonable pride. It had taken nearly two weeks of unremitting toil, some of the working days being twelve and fourteen hours even. But it was worth it all. It gave us a sense of fitness and security for the perilous trip that we were to start on in the morning.
""The Captain" looks like a man of war with all those glittering axes and other weapons. We ought to go out on the Spanish main."
"If she lines up to her name she will be a man of war," said Jim. "I wish it were morning so we could start. Let"s have supper aboard anyway."
This was agreed on, and we soon had a fire built on the beach, and the blue smoke rising in a slender column through the absolutely still air.
Jim slept aboard, but Tom and I decided that it was softer on the sand, so we rolled into our blankets and with the sound of the river in our ears, as it rolled its volume into a narrow ravine below, we were soon asleep.
A shrill whistle woke us up.
"All aboard, steam"s up," cried Jim.
It did not take us a second to wake up to the glad realization that this was the day we started. It beat all the holidays rolled into one for genuine interest and excitement.
Full of life and health and young, with a marvelous and exciting trip just before us.
"Hurrah for "The Captain"," yelled Jim.
"Hurrah for the Colorado," cheered Tom.
"Hurrah for us," I cried.
A brief breakfast and we were ready to cast off. We had to say good-bye to our ponies. It hurt us more, in a way, than if they had been human beings.
They did not seem to mind and the last we saw of them they were grazing peacefully in the meadow along the smaller stream. Tears were in Jim"s eyes as he took a last look at Piute. I did not have such a deep affection for animals as Jim, though I thought a good deal of Coyote.
As the sun came up over the eastern height of the adjacent valley, we were ready to start on our perilous trip.
"Now, shove her off," cried Jim. "Then to your oars."
Slowly we pushed her away from the bank, Jim at the stern, Tom amidship and I in the bow. In a second the current caught her and with a slight clip and rush we went down a little rapid, past the rock that Jim had swum to, and then out into the main current of the Green, and we were at last on our way to the Colorado.
For the first ten minutes nothing was said, for we had our hands full taking our first lesson from the river, and learning something of the ways of our boat.
I had the bow oar and Tom had the other oar just back of me on the opposite side, while Jim was at the stern with the big steering oar, which had taken him one day to make and half of another to put in place.
It was a mighty essential part of our equipment and Jim could guide her in good shape as he stood at the stern, bending it this way and that.
We found that we were able to fight the most capricious currents with Jim at the stern oar, and I pulling on one side and Tom backing water on the other.