So fascinating were these things that I forgot the approaching night.  I first noticed it when the stream slackened its mad pace and spread over its banks into great wide marshes, in divided and subdivided channels and over submerged islands, with nothing but willow and fuzzy cattail tops to indicate that there was a bottom underneath.  Here there was no place to camp had I wished to do so.  Once I missed the main channel and had a difficult time in finding my way back in the dark.  After two or three miles of this quiet current, the streams began to unite again, and the river regained its former speed.  I was growing weary after the first excitement, and began to wish myself well out of it all and safely anchored to the shore.  But I knew there was a level bank above the river close to the bridge, which would make a good camping place; so I rested on my oars facing down the stream with eyes and ears alert for the treacherous snags.  Then the stars began to appear, one by one, lighting up the cloudless sky; a moist, tropical-like breeze moved up the stream, the channel narrowed and deepened, the snags vanished, and the stream increased its swiftness.

And with eyes wide open, but unseeing, I dozed.  It was the lights of a passenger train crossing the bridge, just a short distance away, that made me realize where I was.  The train thundered into the darkness; but louder than the roar of the train was that of the water directly ahead, and hidden in the impenetrable shadow over on the right shore was a noise much like that made by a Grand Canyon rapid.

Wide awake now, I pulled for the left, and after one or two attempts to land, I caught some willow tops and guided the boat to the raised bank.  Beyond the willows was a higher ground, covered with a mesquite thicket, with cattle trails winding under the thorny trees.  Here I unrolled my sleeping bag, then went up to interview the operator and the watchman, and to get a drink of clear water, for I had no desire to drink the liquid mud of the Colorado until it was necessary.  In answer to a question I told them of my little ride.  One of the men exclaimed, “You don’t mean to say that you came down on the flood after dark!” On being informed that I had just arrived, he exclaimed:  “Well I reckon you don’t know what the Colorado is.  It’s a wonder this whirlpool didn’t break you against the pier.  You ought to have brought some one with you to see you drown!”

CHAPTER XXV

FOUR DAYS TO YUMA

Before sunrise the following morning, I had completed my few camp duties, finished my breakfast and dropped my boat into the whirlpool above the bridge.  My two friends watched the manoeuvre as I pulled clear of the logs and the piers which caused the water to make such alarming sounds the night before; then they gave me a final word of caution, and the information that the Parker Bridge was sixty miles away and that Yuma was two hundred and fifty miles down the stream.  They thought that I should reach Yuma in a week.  It seemed but a few minutes until the bridge was a mile up the stream.  Now I was truly embarked for the gulf.