It would mean another
half-day's loss of time to retrace my way and take the only passage
that yet remained unexplored. What hellish fate had led me to
select from three possible avenues the two that were wrong?
As the lazy current of the eddy carried me slowly about the periphery
of the watery circle my boat twice touched the rocky side of the
river in the dark recess beneath the cliff. A third time it struck,
gently as it had before, but the contact resulted in a different
sound--the sound of wood scraping upon wood.
In an instant I was on the alert, for there could be no wood
within that buried river that had not been man brought. Almost
coincidentally with my first apprehension of the noise, my hand shot
out across the boat's side, and a second later I felt my fingers
gripping the gunwale of another craft.
As though turned to stone I sat in tense and rigid silence, straining
my eyes into the utter darkness before me in an effort to discover
if the boat were occupied.
It was entirely possible that there might be men on board it
who were still ignorant of my presence, for the boat was scraping
gently against the rocks upon one side, so that the gentle touch
of my boat upon the other easily could have gone unnoticed.
Peer as I would I could not penetrate the darkness, and then I
listened intently for the sound of breathing near me; but except
for the noise of the rapids, the soft scraping of the boats, and the
lapping of the water at their sides I could distinguish no sound.
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