At last the precipices swung apart and showed the sky at a twist in the cañon's course that was the sharpest of all the turns the explorers had as yet encountered. As Blake came wading down past Ashton, along the inner curve of the bend, he stopped and pointed skywards. Ashton raised his drooping head and peered up at the rim of the opposite wall. From the brink a dense column of green-wood smoke was rising into the indigo sky.
Three minutes later he took a reading on the water and on a point of rock at the angle of the cañon-side around which the river swung in its sharp curve. Three more minutes, and the two battered fighters stood together on the last bench of that tremendous line of levels, with torn and rent clothing, sodden, gaping boots, bodies bruised from head to foot--bleeding, weary, but victorious! They had finished the work that Blake had set out to do.
He held up the now-soaked notebook for Ashton to see the last penciled elevation on the wet paper.
"Two thousand, forty-five!" he shouted. "Over five hundred feet above that bench in Dry Greek Gulch! Water, electricity!--Dry Mesa shall be a garden!"
Ashton stared moodily into the exultant face of the engineer.
"Are you sure of that?" he asked. "How do you know that God will let you climb up out of this hell of stone and water?"
"There's the saying, 'God helps those who help themselves,'" replied Blake. "I'm going to put up the best fight I can. If that doesn't win out, I shall at least have the satisfaction of not having quit. If you wish to pray, do so. The sooner we start the better. From now on, the water will be rising."
"I prayed last night," said Ashton. He added somberly, "And now we are both going to the devil."
"No," said Blake, with no less earnestness. "There is no devil--there is no room for a devil in all the universe. What man calls evil is ignorance,--his ignorance of those primeval forces of nature which he has yet to chain; his ignorance of those higher qualities in his own nature which, if known, would prevent him from wronging others and would enable him to bring happiness to himself and others."
"You say that!" cried Ashton. "You can mock! You do not believe in hell!"
Blake smiled grimly. "What do you call this?--But you mean a hell hereafter. I believe this: If, when we pass into the Unknown, we continue to exist as individual consciousnesses, then we carry with us the heaven and the hell that we have each upbuilt for ourselves."