It was three o’clock in the afternoon when they commenced their preparations for making this extraordinary portage.  Sunk as they were twenty-five hundred feet in the bowels of the earth, the sun had already set for them; but they were still favored with a sort of twilight radiance, and they could count upon it for a couple of hours longer.  Carefully the guns, paddles, and stores were landed on the marvellous causeway; and then, with still greater caution, the boat was lifted to the same support and taken to pieces.  The whole mass of material, some two hundred pounds in weight, was divided into three portions.  Each shouldered his pack, and the strange journey commenced.

“Sweeny, don’t you fall off,” said Glover.  “We can’t spare them sticks.”

“If I fall off, ye may shute me where I stand,” returned Sweeny.  “I know better’n to get drowned and starved to death in wan.  I can take care av meself.  I’ve sailed this a way many a time in th’ ould counthry.”

The road was a smooth and easy one, barring a few cumbering bowlders.  To the left and below was the river, roaring, hissing, and foaming through its chevaux-de-frise of rocks.  In front the canon stretched on and on until its walls grew dim with shadow and distance.  Above were overhanging precipices and a blue streak of sunlit sky.

It was quite dusk with the wanderers before they reached a point where the San Juan once more flowed with an undisturbed current.

“We can’t launch by this light,” said Thurstane.  “We will sleep here.”

“It’ll be a longish night,” commented Glover.  “But don’t see’s we can shorten it by growlin’.  When fellahs travel in the bowels ‘f th’ earth, they’ve got to follow the customs ‘f th’ country.  Puts me in mind of Jonah in the whale’s belly.  Putty short tacks, Capm.  Nine hours a day won’t git us along; any too fast.  But can’t help it.  Night travellin’ ain’t suited to our boat.  Suthin’ like a bladder football:  one pin-prick ’d cowallapse it.  Wal, so we’ll settle.  Lucky we wanted our blankets to set on.  ’Pears to me this rock’s a leetle harder’n a common deck plank.  Unroll the boat, Capm?  Wal, guess we’d better.  Needs dryin’a speck.  Too much soakin’ an’t good for canvas.  Better dry it out, ‘n’ fold it up, ‘n’ sleep on’t.  This passageway that we’re in, sh’d say at might git up a smart draught.  What d’ye say to this spot for campin’?  Twenty foot breadth of beam here.  Kind of a stateroom, or bridal chamber.  No need of fallin’ out.  Ever walk in yer sleep, Sweeny?  Better cut it right square off to-night.  Five fathom down to the river, sh’d say.  Splash ye awfully, Sweeny.”

Thus did Captain Glover prattle in his cheerful way while the party made its preparations for the night.

They were like ants lodged in some transverse crack of a lofty wall.  They were in a deep cut of the shelf, with fifteen hundred or two thousand feet of sandstone above, and the porphyry-colored river thirty feet below.  The narrow strip of sky far above their heads was darkening rapidly with the approach of night, and with an accumulation of clouds.  All of a sudden there was a descent of muddy water, charged with particles of red earth and powdered sandstone, pouring by them down the overhanging precipice.