Part 9

This, by the way, did not prove a very difficult job. They were cowards at heart, were these scoundrelly Chilanos. A short, sharp tussle, a few well-directed blows given with all an Englishman's zest, and we had Frenchy out of the mêlée, while, with a quick wrench, I possessed myself of the loaded cane.

A horse-rug in the corner caught my eye, and in a twinkling we had Frenchy in it and hustled him outside--I, meanwhile, calling off our men and bidding them make tracks for the boat. As we gained the open air, and stooped down with our burden so that we might get a better grip of the improvised stretcher, the man-of-all-work made a flying leap towards me and, with a savage downward blow, endeavoured to drive a knife between my shoulder-blades. Only my quickness of movement saved me. Almost before he could recover himself I had jumped up and caught him a resounding crack on his figurehead that laid him low. Old Miguel joined him next with a similar dose. Don Carlos had by this time made a rapid exit and, running to the corner, was howling vociferously for the _vigilantes_. But what did I care for _vigilantes_ now? My blood was fairly up. Into the store I rushed, followed by my shipmates, leaving the Frenchman to the care of his countrymen, and in less time than it takes to tell the place was in the most artistic state of wreck you can well conceive.

Then, triumphant, we marched off--a defiant, victorious squad, tattered and torn to a degree. For myself, my white coat had gone entirely; a cotton singlet which I wore was minus an arm, and that which was left was splashed with blood; my white trousers were torn from the ankle to the knee, and one of my shoes was missing.

We had not proceeded far, however, before we found that Don Carlos's howling for the _vigilantes_ was taking effect.

From this street and that figures came running, and swelled a rapidly growing mob, which followed on our heels, hooting and throwing missiles. Higher up the street a shout was raised, which cry was taken up and echoed by the mob. An officer of _vigilantes_, with drawn sword and bristling moustache, pushed his way through the crowd and called upon us to halt. Failing to get his way by word of mouth, he started pricking us in the legs with his sword-point. Hearing me give the order to "rush him," and seeing in me the man whom he believed to be in command, he directed his attentions to me. "Halta! halta!" he cried, peremptorily, but I pushed him aside and marched on. Then a sharp stab in my leg made me hop. For a moment only did I hesitate, then my back stiffened, my hand shot forward with the malacca at the first guard, and with my old R.N.R. drill in my mind I engaged him--his sword to my cane.

For some time we went at it hammer and tongs, while the crowd stood back in awestricken amazement. Acting only on the defensive, I warded off his cuts with a coolness which surprised me later on, but soon a stinging sensation in the shoulder caused me to change my tactics. Pressing him hard until an opening presented itself, I brought him to the ground with a "cut one," delivered with all the force I possessed.

Then came the retreat. Away we flew--the Frenchmen, with our wounded man, towards the mountains; some of our men up one street, some down another, while I made a bee-line for the wharf and the boat.

The howling mob behind pursued me hotly. Occasionally I would stop and shake my cane at them, which had the effect of bringing them to a momentary halt. Then I was off again.

I don't wonder at their halting when I swung round upon them, for I must have cut a most awful figure. Blood-stained and ragged, with the excitement of battle showing in my eyes and face, they must have thought I was mad, and for the moment I suppose I was.

Soon the wharf hove into view. Out in the bay I could see the lights of my ship. With beating heart and laboured breath I sped on. Suddenly someone rushed out at me from a dark corner. For a moment I staggered; then, as he raced on at my side, I discovered, to my joy, that it was one of my shipmates.

Another hundred yards and we should be safe. Then, without warning, we ran straight into the arms of a cordon of _vigilantes_ drawn up in a semicircle awaiting our approach!

It was all over. Unresistingly we allowed ourselves to be manacled, and, guarded on either side by half-a-dozen men with shouldered rifles and fixed bayonets, we were driven off to the "calaboose," two officers on horseback bringing up the rear of the cavalcade.

Thrown into a cell, where I found my comrades already housed, I had ample time to meditate upon the events of the last hour or two. I had been in many a scrape before, but this was the first time I had ever been on the hither side of prison walls, and now that the excitement had passed, I fairly recoiled at the disgrace of it.

My head ached, my feet were lacerated, I was dirty, blood-stained, and nearly naked. I looked around the filthy place, at the no less filthy Chilanos--our fellow-prisoners, who jeered at us derisively--and groaned aloud.

Though feeling my position keenly, I was by no means sorry for what I had done. I had acted, I told myself, just as any other Englishman would under the circumstances. I had been goaded into it, and the blame lay with Don Carlos and his rascally compatriot.

Arraigned before the judge the next day we presented a bedraggled appearance. Through an interpreter the charge was explained to us, evidence was heard, and the case decided. After we had been removed we found that the prison-sheet contained the following notice: "Alberto Crafto, José Essien, Juan Andres, Carlos Parko, Tomaso Mahan, twenty-five days' imprisonment each." The Frenchmen were not in it--they had apparently got clear away to the hills.

Prison life was not so bad, save for the taint and the vile companions amongst whom we were thrown. We were fairly well treated and fed, had plenty of outdoor recreation, and labour of any description was never asked of one.

This last was the thing which preyed upon me. I like being busy at any time, besides, the enforced idleness left too much time for unwholesome thinking.

At length I asked permission to work. "What can you do?" questioned the Commandante. "Do? Anything!" I told him. "Mend a roof, make a chair, do joiner work, paint----"

"Paint, ah!" he cried--some idea had evidently struck him. "Well, I will think of it."

The end of it was that I was given the job to paint the office at which ships received pratique. This office stood on the wharf adjacent to the landing-place. It was a building constructed of inch-and-a-half deal planking, and consisted of two rooms. I was also given tools with which to do a little repairing.

Nothing could possibly have suited me better. The moment I entered it I thought: "Here is my chance of escape!" A thin, wooden floor, a rickety old wharf, and beneath that the water and safety--I could not have wished for anything better.

Each morning I was escorted to the office by two _vigilantes_, who locked the door upon me and immediately went off, returning only to give me my midday meal, and later to escort me back to prison.

An hour after being left alone I had weighed up all the chances. Another went by, and by dint of strenuous exertions I had made a very fair show of painting on one of the walls--this in case of any undue inquisitiveness.

Next I found a suitable place, away from observation, at a point where the floor was covered with reed matting, and began, carefully and noiselessly, cutting through the planks.

Between times I showed myself at the one window in case anyone should be spying; then I would do a little painting and hammering, but I always returned to my chief objective--sawing my way through to the water.

Using every precaution--covering up and disposing of even the minutest particle of sawdust--always on the alert, and working like a Trojan whenever my jailers were expected, I made such good progress that by the third morning a hole large enough to permit of my body passing had been cut through the twelve-inch deals of the jetty, the pieces which I had cut out being carefully stowed in the space between the floor of the office and the jetty. The way of escape was open!

The only thing that bothered me was that I should be compelled to make my attempt at escape during the day, as each night, of course, I was securely locked up in the jail. Well, I should have to risk it. I would wait until the hour after noon, I decided, when the greater percentage of these indolent Chilanos indulged in their siesta. It was a hundred to one chance against my being discovered, and as I had been taking risks all along, there was no reason why I should shirk them now.

Noon came, and with it my dinner. My hand must have trembled as I took the dish from the _vigilante's_ hand, for he calmly walked within a yard of the hole in the floor! Certainly I felt my face pale with suppressed emotion and fear.

He looked sharply at me. "Usted malo?" (you sick) he asked. I shook my head, and, apparently satisfied, the man turned on his heel and left.

Hastily swallowing a few mouthfuls of food, I waited, with what patience I could, for the time I had fixed upon for my escape. In this, fortune favoured me. It was a stifling, suffocating day, with not a breath of air stirring. The populace seemed even more eager than usual to seek the shelter of their verandas, while the boatmen and quay loiterers retreated to the comparative coolness of the shaded alameda.

A little while longer and only an occasional straggler disturbed the stillness of the sleepy quayside. Then I knew the time had come.

Carefully, yet quickly, I slipped through the hole in the floor, and, hanging on to the beams overhead, pulled the matting over the cavity. Though my heart beat fast with trepidation, I could not repress a grim chuckle at the thought of the consternation of my jailer when he found me gone. Then I dropped silently into the water.

It was only a few yards to the nearest boat. Reaching it, I clambered cautiously over the gunwale and lay flat in the bottom. Barely allowing myself time to regain my breath, and inwardly congratulating myself upon my success, I raised my body with the intention of casting off the painter. Then a heavy hand fell upon my shoulder, and a guttural voice spoke a short, sharp command.

It was a _vigilante_! Under an awning in the next boat he had sought relief from the fierce heat, and the gentle bumping of my craft against his had awakened him. And now I had been recaptured, just when victory seemed within my grasp!

Back to the prison I was marched, being informed that thenceforth I should be kept in close confinement.

Next morning, while communing with my moody thoughts, I was aroused by heavy footsteps outside. A key grated in the lock, and the Commandante, with my captain at his side, stepped in.

"Pretty mess this is you've got yourself into!" growled the captain. "And you are the man I depended upon and held responsible for the good behaviour of the others! Going around the place like a madman, killing half-a-dozen police, and wrecking a store--not to speak of the disgrace you have brought upon yourself and my ship. You deserve all that is coming to you--and I'll see you get it, too!"

"Very well, sir," I answered, not without a little shame in my voice. "You have heard what these people have to say against me. But there are two sides to every story----"

"And my side," interrupted the captain, flicking a paper in my face, "is that you'll pay this twenty-five dollars fine and come down to the ship with me at once, where you'll be logged two days' pay for one as a fitting finish to your holiday."[5]

[5] It is an understood thing--perhaps an unwritten law--that when a seaman is sentenced to imprisonment in a foreign port as the result of a "flare-up," the captain of his ship can, with the aid of the Consul, pay any fine imposed, thereby claiming the man's discharge and immediate removal to his vessel. The fine, with the further forfeiture of the two days' pay claimed for every one absent from duty, is then deducted from the seaman's pay at the end of the voyage.--+The Author+.

So, one way and another, we paid pretty dearly for our little trip ashore at Antofagasta.

A Daring Voyage Down the Grand Canyon.

+By David Allen+.

An account of the unique feat accomplished by two intrepid miners who, in frail row-boats, made a trip which has never before been performed in its entirety by water--a voyage down the rock-strewn torrent of the Colorado River, where it burrows thousands of feet below the surface of the earth in a series of tremendous gorges, the most famous of which is the Grand Canyon. Time and again the two men faced death in the boiling rapids, but eventually they emerged in safety after a journey of seven hundred and fifty miles, lasting over three months.

Everybody has heard of Niagara Falls and the terrible rapids which the tortured waters of the river form below the great cascade.

The Niagara, however, is a mere creek in size compared with another American stream, the Colorado, which may well be called a river of mystery, partly because of the strange region through which it passes, and partly because so little is known about it. Unlike the Niagara, the Colorado is far away from civilization. Making its devious way through inaccessible mountains and arid deserts, very few human beings live near it. But the Colorado flows _under_ the earth rather than on the top; for hundreds of miles it rushes through vast gorges thousands of feet in depth. The greatest gorge of all is well called the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

The Grand Canyon, however, is only one of a series of mighty clefts in which the river has literally buried itself. The bottoms are so rugged, so strewn with great rocks and boulders, that only in a few places does the current flow smoothly. For miles and miles the surface of the water is a mass of foaming wave-tops, tossed ceaselessly to and fro amid the rocky obstructions, forming currents and fierce eddies beside which the famous Niagara whirlpool seems insignificant.

There are places where the surface of the Colorado is seven thousand five hundred feet below the brink of the gorge, and at nearly every point it is close on six thousand feet. Looking across from one edge of the canyon to the other, the distance seems to the novice to be two miles. Say so to one of the guides or trailsmen and he may smile; for at Bright Angel trail the width is no less than thirteen miles, while the tourist who stands on the brink at Grand View and looks directly across covers with the glance a distance of eighteen miles. The eye is indeed deceptive here, for if you descend to what is known as the top of the inner gorge and look down upon the river the Colorado appears to be a muddy creek twenty or twenty-five feet wide. But these black walls of granite, which descend almost vertically from the place where you stand, are actually four times the height of Niagara's famous gorge, being nearly fourteen hundred feet sheer, and the river itself is over a hundred and fifty feet wide.

Yet, spite of its fierce current and deadly, rock-strewn rapids, men have dared to attempt to float down this semi-subterranean river in boats. They have tried it, but only two such adventurers can say that they did it successfully, and can prove their story by photographs. These men, who have accomplished a feat that seemed to be impossible, are Charles Russell and E. R. Monett, two American gold-miners. Away back in 1869 the famous explorer Powell tried to navigate the river with an expedition consisting of four boats and eight men, but most of the boats were wrecked long before the end of the gorges was reached, and in several places they dared not trust to the waters, but carried their craft bodily round the dangerous passages. Twenty years after Major Powell made the attempt Stanton, another explorer, tried it with three boats and twelve men, but his party did not complete the journey by water. Since then several other expeditions have risked their lives; and in some cases men have gone into those grim and gloomy gorges and never been heard of again.

Russell and Monett expected to have a companion named Loper in their adventure, but, as will be noted, Loper met with such disaster early in the trip that he left them. How the trio conceived the daring exploit is worth the telling. The plan, according to Russell, originated several years ago in the mind of Russell's companion, Loper, while the two men were working in a mine at Cripple Creek. In 1893 Loper had been attracted to the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado, in South-Eastern Utah, by the excitement created by the discovery of placer gold there. He had never forgotten his experiences, and confided to Russell his belief that the Grand Canyon of the Colorado offered proportionately greater chances of much richer placer mining. The two men planned to make their start in the spring of 1900, but the dangers and almost insurmountable difficulties of the task they had so lightly undertaken slowly became apparent to them, and they finally decided to wait until they were properly equipped in point of money and information. At the outset they found they must get at least one more companion if they were to be successful--and four men were preferable to three. According to Russell, their eight years' search for a partner disclosed no individual with the necessary qualifications who was willing to make the trip.

Consequently, it was not until April, 1907, that their long-laid plans began to materialize. Loper met Monett--a boy in appearance, not seemingly strong and unusually quiet--at the Mohawk Mine in Goldfield. But that Monett was not young--in courage, at least--and not as weak as a casual glance revealed, was presently evidenced when the young man expressed not only a willingness to share the dangers of the trip with the other two, but urged as proof of his strength his work in the mines--a daily physical test calling for no little endurance. Loper notified Russell, then foreman of a mine near Prescott, that the third man had at last been found, and a meeting was arranged for Green River, Utah, early in September. To this point were shipped the row-boats Russell and Loper had determined to pin their faith to, together with a three months' supply of provisions.

Realizing that the loss of the boats meant failure and perhaps loss of life, the explorers took great care to secure suitable craft. They were designed to be light yet strong, each large enough to hold one man in addition to the food and clothing composing his outfit. Each boat was sixteen feet long, with steel ribs, covered with a tough wooden "skin," which was still further protected by a covering of stout canvas. To prevent them being swamped in the boiling rapids, the boats were covered with decks made of steel sheets, carefully riveted together so that the joints would be water-tight. A hole just large enough to admit a man's body was left in the centre, and when the voyager took his seat at the oars flaps of heavy cloth were stretched around his body extending to the edges of the cavity. Each craft had a reservoir full of air built into either end, like a lifeboat, to give it more buoyancy. The little fleet bore the names of _Arizona_, _Utah_, and _Nevada_, the respective States from which the intrepid trio hailed.

On the Green River in Utah, one of the sources of the Colorado, the men launched their craft and began their strange voyage. They were four days in reaching the Colorado, having to travel about a hundred and twenty-five miles. It was not difficult to tell when the Colorado was reached, for almost immediately they plunged into what is known as the Little Cataract Canyon, where the smooth waters abruptly ended. For forty-one miles they were swirled and thrown about in the grip of angry currents. Luckily Russell and Monett came out safely, but Loper came to grief. Their experience is thus described by Russell:--

"The rapids presented a terrifying appearance, the rushing, roaring water, beaten into foam as it plunged over the rocks, rolling in waves five to ten feet high at the foot. These extended for a hundred yards and more before they became quieter, and ended in swirling whirlpools. Hardly does the water quiet down when it takes another plunge, so close are the rapids together. This was my first experience in shooting rapids. I seemed to go very slowly until quite near the brink, when my speed was suddenly accelerated and over I plunged, the boat taking a stiff angle downward as she went over, only to rise abruptly as she climbed the next wave. Then came another pitch downward for the succeeding billow, but this she did not climb. The wave combed back fiercely, and the stern end of the boat plunged under, the water almost taking my breath away as it swept clear across the boat. She rose nicely, however, and came out on top of the next one easily. We were soon through the worst part, and pulled into the eddy.

"Before long we entered upon the worst part of this canyon. Rapids Fourteen, Fifteen, and Sixteen are so close together that they must be run without stopping, as there is practically no quiet water between them; and so rocky is No. Sixteen that it seems impossible to get through at all. Loper proposed to run it with his boat, the _Arizona_, while we watched the result. He handled the craft very dexterously, being an excellent oarsman, and was successful in striking the only place in Rapid Sixteen that a boat could pass through. But even here the current dashed hard against a huge rock, taking a vertical drop of four or five feet off one side. Loper found it impossible to keep the boat away from this boulder and she was swept heavily against it. She turned almost on end, but luckily the water was deep and she came up like a fish. After seeing Loper's experience Monett and myself were fearful of our ability to get through, and Loper bravely volunteered to bring our boats through, which feat he accomplished in safety."