“If—­if we can find him,” replied the other in low tones.

“Go on—­run!” cried Joe, for the Indian did not seem to understand.  Then the meaning and need of haste occurred to him.

“Si, senor, I go—­pronto!” he exclaimed, and he was off on a run.

Fortunately for Blake and Mr. Alcando, the worst of the slide seemed to be over.  A big mass of the hill below them, and off to their right, had slid down into the Canal.  It was the outer edge of this that had engulfed Joe and his camera.  Had he been directly in the path of the avalanche, nothing could have saved him.  As it was, Blake felt a deadly fear gripping at his heart that, after all, it might be impossible to rescue his chum.

“But I’ll get him!  I’ll get him!” he said fiercely to himself, over and over again.  “I’ll get him!”

Slipping, sliding, now being buried up to their knees in the soft mud and sand, again finding some harder ground, or shelf of shale, that offered good footing, Blake and the Spaniard struggled on through the rain.  It was still coming down, but not as hard as before.

“Here’s the place!” cried Blake, coming to a halt in front of where several stones formed a rough circle.  “He’s under here.”

“No, farther on, I think,” said the Spaniard.

Blake looked about him.  His mind was in a turmoil.  He could not be certain as to the exact spot where Joe had been engulfed in the slide, and yet he must know to a certainty.  There was no time to dig in many places, one after the other, to find his chum.  Every second was vital.

“Don’t you think it’s here?” Blake asked, “Try to think!”

“I am!” the Spaniard replied.  “And it seems to me that it was farther on.  If there was only some way we could tell—­”

The sentence trailed off into nothingness.  There was really no way of telling.  All about them was a dreary waste of mud, sand, boulders, smaller stones, gravel and more mud—­mud was over everything.  And more mud was constantly being made, for the rain had not ceased.

“I’m going to dig here!” decided Blake in desperation, as with his bare hands he began throwing aside the dirt and stones.  Mr. Alcando watched him for a moment, and then, as though giving up his idea as to where Joe lay beneath the dirt, he, too, started throwing on either side the clay and soil.

Blake glanced down the hill.  The Indian messenger had disappeared, and, presumably, had reached the tug, and was giving the message for help.  Then Blake bent to his Herculean task again.  When next he looked up, having scooped a slight hole in the side of the hill, he saw a procession of men running up—­men with picks and shovels over their shoulders.  He saw, too, a big slice of the hill in the Canal.  The wonderful waterway was blocked at Culebra Cut.

Blake thought little of that then.  His one idea and frantic desire was to get Joe out.