When Glover announced that the boat was ready for launching, Sweeny uttered a yelp of joy, like a dog who sees a prospect of hunting.

“Ah, you paddywhack!” growled the skipper.  “All this work for you.  Punch another hole, ‘n’ I’ll take yer own hide to patch it.”

“I’ll give ye lave,” returned Sweeny.  “Wan bare skin ’s good as another.  Only I might want me own back agin for dress-parade.”

Once more on the Colorado.  Although the boat floated deeper than before, navigation in it was undoubtedly safer, so that they made bolder ventures and swifter progress.  Such portages, however, as they were still obliged to traverse, were very severe, inasmuch as the Buchanan was now much above its original weight.  Several times they had to carry one half of their materials for a mile or more, through a labyrinth of rocks, and then trudge back to get the other half.

Meantime their power of endurance was diminishing.  The frequent wettings, the shivering nights, the great changes of temperature, the stale and wretched food, the constant anxiety, were sapping their health and strength.  On the tenth day of their wanderings in the Great Canon Glover began to complain of rheumatism.

“These cussed draughts!” he groaned.  “It’s jest like travellin’ in a bellows nozzle.”

“Wid the divil himself at the bellys,” added Sweeny.  “Faix, an’ I wish he’d blow us clane out intirely.  I’m gittin’ tired o’ this same, I am.  I didn’t lisht to sarve undher ground.”

“Patience, Sweeny,” smiled Thurstane.  “We must be nearly through the canon.”

“An’ where will we come out, Liftinant?  Is it in Ameriky?  Bedad, we ought to be close to the Chaynees by this time.  Liftinant, what sort o’ paple lives up atop of us, annyway?”

“I don’t suppose anybody lives up there,” replied the officer, raising his eyes to the dizzy precipices above.  “This whole region is said to be a desert.”

“Be gorry, an’ it ‘ll stay a desert till the ind o’ the worrld afore I’ll poppylate it.  It wasn’t made for Sweenys.  I haven’t seen sile enough in tin days to raise wan pataty.  As for livin’ on dried grizzly, I’d like betther for the grizzlies to live on me.  Liftinant, I niver see sich harrd atin’.  It tires the top av me head off to chew it.”

About noon of the twelfth day in the Great Canon this perilous and sublime navigation came to a close.  The walls of the chasm suddenly spread out into a considerable opening, which absolutely seemed level ground to the voyagers, although it was encumbered with mounds or buttes of granite and sandstone.  This opening was produced by the entrance into the main channel of a subsidiary one, coming from the south.  At first they did not observe further particulars, for they were in extreme danger of shipwreck, the river being studded with rocks and running like a mill-race.  But on reaching the quieter water below the rapid, they saw that the branch canon contained a rivulet, and that where the two streams united there was a triangular basin, offering a safe harbor.