herefore
we forbore to question him further concerning it, and sought by quiet
talk, that led softly into silence, to take his thoughts away from the
peril that he had been in. Indeed, we all were glad to rest quietly
where we were for the night, for our bodies were tired and our nerves
were racked and strained.

We should have been most thankful for a big potful of coffee, but there
was no wood with which we could make a fire. The best that we could do,
and there was not much comfort in it, was to chew some coffee grains
after we had made a supper upon one of our few remaining tins of meat;
and then we rolled ourselves in our blankets and lay down upon the bare
rock. And I must say that if anybody had asked me at that moment if
archaeology was a study that paid for the trouble that it cost, I should
have said most unhesitatingly that it was not.

Even sleep, which I greatly needed, and for which I earnestly longed,
did not come to me easily; for each time that I seemed to be dropping
gently away into unconsciousness I would be roused by the feeling that I
was holding fast to the chain again, and so was sliding down the long
curve among the shadows, with the great walls of the canon towering
infinitely above me, and with the black depth below. And in my sleep I
made again the dreadful passage, and heard the clinking of the chain as
it parted, and the rattle of it as it struck the rocks, and felt the
grasp of Rayburn as he caught me, just as the bar was twitched out of my
hands--and so woke to find Young shaking me, and to hear him say:
"There's no earthly sense in your kickin' around that way, Professor;
an', anyhow, it's time t' get up. It's just a wonder how these Mexican
mornin's put life into a man. Why, there's a freshness in th' air that's
goin' t' waste in this canon that's fit t' make a coffin stand right up
on end an' dance a jig!"

Even Fray Antonio, but for the soreness of his hurt, felt strong and
well; and we ate another tin of meat--which was much less than we
wanted to eat--and so started along the path hewn out of the side of the
cliff; and what with the brightness and joyfulness of the morning, we
certainly were in much higher spirits than was at all reasonable in the
case of men who had had such close companionship with Death so short a
time before, and who still stood a very fair chance of dying dismally of
starvation. The knowledge that, by the falling of the chain, our retreat
had been again cut