His lively mind had hardly dismissed this subject before he remarked:  “Dum cur’ous that towline breaking.  I overhauled every foot on’t.  I’d a bet my bottom fo’pence on its drawin’ ten ton.  Haul in the slack end ‘n’ let’s hev a peek at it.”

The tip of the lariat, which was still attached to the boat, being handed to him, he examined it minutely, closed his eyes, whistled, and ejaculated, “Sawed!”

“What?” asked Thurstane.

“Sawed,” repeated Glover.  “That leather was haggled in tew with a jagged knife or a sharp flint or suthin ’f that sort.  Done a purpose, ’s sure ’s I’m a sinner.”

Thurstane took the lariat, inspected the breakage carefully, and scowled with helpless rage.

“That infernal Texan!” he muttered.

“Sho!” said Glover.  “That feller?  Anythin’ agin ye?  Wal, Capm, then all I’ve got to say is, you come off easy.  That feller ‘d cut a sleepin’ man’s throat.  I sh’d say thank God for the riddance.  Tell ye I’ve watched that cuss.  Been blastedly afeard ’f him.  Hev so, by George!  The further I git from him the safer I feel.”

“Not a nice man to leave there” muttered Thurstane, whose anxiety was precisely not for himself, but for Clara.  The young fellow could not be got to talk much; he was a good deal upset by his calamity.  The parting from Clara was an awful blow; the thought of her dangers made him feel as if he could jump overboard; and, lurking deep in his soul, there was an ugly fear that Coronado might now win her.  He was furious moreover at having been tricked, and meditated bedlamite plans of vengeance.  For a time he stared more at the mangled lariat than at the amazing scenery through which he was gliding.

And yet that scenery, although only a prelude, only an overture to the transcendent oratorios of landscape which were to follow, was in itself a horribly sublime creation.  Not twenty minutes after the snapping of the towline the boat had entered one of those stupendous canons which form the distinguishing characteristic of the great American table-land, and make it a region unlike any other in the world.

Remember that the canon is a groove chiselled out of rock by a river.  Although a groove, it is never straight for long distances.  The river at its birth was necessarily guided by the hollows of the primal plateau; moreover, it was tempted to labor along the softest surfaces.  Thus the canon is a sinuous gully, cut down from the hollows of rocky valleys, and following their courses of descent from mountain-chain toward ocean.

In these channels the waters have chafed, ground, abraded, eroded for centuries which man cannot number.  Like the Afreets of the Arabian Nights, they have been mighty slaves, subject to a far mightier master.  That potent magician whose lair is in the centre of the earth, and whom men have vaguely styled the attraction of gravitation, has summoned them incessantly toward himself.  In their struggle to render him obedience, they have accomplished results which make all the works of man insignificant by comparison.