ledges of the lower side of the
barrier to where the river burst furiously out of the mouth of the
tunnel.

Hurled by that mad torrent from the darkness of the gorged cavern
straight upon a line of rocks, all Blake's strength and quickness had
not enabled him to save himself from injury. Yet he had crept up those
rough ledges, dragging his shattered leg. Atrocious as must have been
his agony, he had crept all the way to the top, had written the note,
and flung down the rope to rescue his companion.

There was no vessel in which Ashton could carry water. He had no hat,
his boots were full of holes, he must use his hands in scrambling back
up the ledges. He stripped off his tattered flannel shirt, dipped it
in a swirling eddy, and started back as fast as he could climb.

Blake still lay unconscious. Ashton straightened out the twisted leg,
and knelt to bathe the big white face with an end of the dripping
garment. After a time the eyelids of the prostrate man fluttered and
lifted, and the pale blue eyes stared upward with returning
consciousness.

"I'm here!" cried Ashton. "Do you see? You saved me!"

"Colt's gone," muttered Blake. "But cartridges--fire."

"You mean, fire the cartridges to let them know where we are? How can
I do it without the revolver?"

"No, build a fire," replied the engineer. He raised a heavy hand to
point towards the high end of the barrier. "Driftwood up there. Bring
it down. I'll light it."

"Light it--how?" asked Ashton incredulously.

"Get it," ordered Blake.

Ashton hurried across the crest of the barrier to where it sloped up
and merged in the precipice foot. The mass of rock that formed the
barrier had fallen out of the face of the lower part of the canyon
wall, leaving a great hollow in the rock. But above the hollow the
upper precipices beetled out and rose sheer, on up the dizzy heights
to the verge of the chasm. Contrasted with this awesome undermined
wall, the broken, steeple-sloped precipices adjoining it on the
upstream side looked hopefully scalable to Ashton. He marked out a
line of shelves and crevices running far up to where the full sunlight
smiled on the rock.

But Blake had told him to fetch wood for a fire, that they might
signal the watchers on the heights. He hastened up over the rocks to
the heaps of logs and branches stranded on the high end of the barrier
by the freshets. Every year the river, swollen by the spring rains,
brimmed over the top of this natura