They lay long, looking at the stars that night. "Some day," said Jim, "there will be a two hundred feet width of concrete wall right where we are lying. Doesn't it make you feel a little hollow in your stomach to think that you and I have decreed where it shall be?"
"Yes," said Charlie. "It's a good spot, Manning. I hope I get a chance to lay out the road down here. They will have to blast it out of the solid granite. It will eat money up to make it."
"Let me in on it, won't you," pleaded Jim.
"Well, slightly!" exclaimed Charlie. "Now for a good night's sleep. We ought to be out in three days. That will make ten days in all, just what I planned."
Jim hardly knew Charlie the next day. No college freshman on his first holiday ever acted more outrageously. He sang ancient college songs that reverberated in the canyon like yells on a football field. He stood solemnly on his head on the top of rock pinnacles. He crowned himself and Jim with wreaths made of water cress that he found on a tiny sandy beach. When they were obliged to take to the water he pretended that he was an alligator and made uncouth sounds and lashed the water with the grub bag in lieu of a tail.
Late in the afternoon, while they were swimming through a whirlpool, he insisted on giving Jim a lecture on the gentle art of bee-hunting as he had seen it practiced in Maine.
"Now we will pretend that I am the bee!" he shouted at Jim. "You will admit that I look like one! I am drunk with honey and I hang to the comb thus!"
He caught a point of rock with one hand and lazily waved the other.
"For heaven's sake, be careful!" yelled Jim. "This is no blooming ten-cent show! Keep both hands on the rock and climb up for a rest."
Charlie suddenly went white. "God! I've got cramp!" he screamed. "Both legs. Help me, Manning!"
He struggled to get his free hand on the rock, but the water tore at him like a ravening beast and he lost his hold. Jim swam furiously after him. The white head showed for a moment, then disappeared around a turn of the wall.
"When I was young I thought the world was made for love. Now I know that love made the world."
How he passed the night that followed Jim never was sure. He knew that he fought his way down stream until long after darkness set in. Then, utterly exhausted, bleeding and bruised, he crawled up onto a rock under the wall and lay dripping and shivering until dawn.