Emery took but little interest in our camp arrangements this evening, and went to bed as soon as it was possible for him to do so. He said little, but he was very weak, and I could tell from his drawn face that he was suffering, and knew that it was nothing but nervous energy that kept him at his work--that, and a promise which he had made to build a fire, within a stated time now less than two weeks away, in Bright Angel Creek Canyon, nearly three hundred miles below this camp, a signal to his wife and baby that he would be home the next day. I was worried about his condition and I feared a fever or pneumonia. For two or three days he had not been himself. It was one thing to battle with the river when well and strong; it would be decidedly different if one of us became seriously ill.
For the first time in all our experiences together, where determination and skill seemed necessary to success, I had taken the lead during the past two days, feeling that my greater weight and strength, perhaps, would help me pull out of danger where he might fail. In two or three rapids I felt sure he did not have the strength to pull away from certain places that would smash the boats. After running the _Defiance_ through these rapids I suggested to him that; he would take a picture while I brought the _Edith_ down. He would stay near the _Defiance_, ready to aid in case of emergency. After being once through a rapid I found it quite a simple matter to run the second boat, and the knowledge that he would save me in case of an upset greatly lessened any danger that might have existed. He was too nervous to sleep, and asked me to take a last look at the boats before going to bed. They were pulled well up on the shore and securely tied, I found, so that it would take a flood to tear them loose. The rain, which had stopped for a while, began again as I rolled into the blankets; the fire, fed with great cottonwood logs, threw ghostly shadows on the cliffs which towered above us, and sputtered in the rain but refused to be drowned; while the roar of rapids, Nos. 22 and 23 combined, thundered and reverberated from wall to wall, and finally lulled us to sleep.
The rain continued all night, but the weather cleared in the morning. Emery felt much the same as he had the day before, so we kept the same camp that day. We took some pictures, and made a few test developments, hanging the dark-room, or tent, inside the other tent for want of a better place to tie to.