He rose to take out two portions of food from the single pack in which he had bound up all the provisions. The portion for Ashton was small; his own was smaller. He roused the dozing man and placed the larger share of food in his hand.
"Don't drop it," he cautioned. "That's all I can let you have. We must go on rations until we can see a way out of this hole."
Ashton ate his meager breakfast without replying. The fire within him had burned to ashes. He was cold and dull and dispirited. He had failed. He would have been willing to sit and brood, and wait for God to answer his prayer.--But his waiting was not to be an inert lingering in the place where he had failed.
The moment the down-creeping daylight so lessened the gloom of the depths that Blake could take rod readings, he plunged over into the stream, with a curtly cheerful command for Ashton to prepare to follow. Too dejected even to resist, the younger man silently obeyed. When Blake signaled to him through the dimness, he held the rod on the last turning-point of the previous day, and lowered himself from the shelf down into the stream.
The evening before, the water at this point had come up to his waist. It was now only knee-deep. His surprise was so great that in passing Blake he broke his sullen silence to remark the fact and ask what could have caused the change.
"Melting of the snow on the high range," the engineer shouted in explanation. "Takes time for it to run down the cañon all these miles. River probably still falling. Will begin to rise about noon. Faster we get along now, the easier it will be. Hustle!"
Ashton responded mechanically to the will of his commander. For the time being his own will was almost paralyzed. The reaction from his long-sustained rage had left him dazed and nerveless. He had sunk into a state of fatalistic indifference. He moved quickly downstream from turning-point to turning-point, driven by Blake's will, but with a heedless recklessness that all Blake's warnings could not check.
Within the first hour he twice stumbled and went under while wading deep reaches of the river, and once he fell from a ledge, bruising himself severely and knocking a splinter from the rod. Half an hour later he lost his footing in descending a swift and narrow place that would have been impassable at high water. Had not Blake been below him he would never have come out alive.