ed 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 w