he Last Chance, or something appropriate like that,"
Bruce suggested, although there was too much truth in the jest for him
to smile. This attempt to recover the sunken boat was literally that. If
it was gone, he was done. His work, all that he had been through, was
wasted effort; the whole an expensive fiasco proving that the majority
are sometimes right.

The suspense which Bruce had been under for more than two months would
soon be ended one way or the other. Day and night it seemed to him he
had thought of little else than the fate of the sunken boat. His brain
was tired with conjecturing as to what had happened to her when the
water had reached its flood. Had the force of it shoved her into deeper
water? Had the sand which the water carried at that period filled and
covered her? Had the current wrenched her to pieces and imbedded the
machinery deep in the sediment and mud?

Questioning his own judgment, doubtful as to whether he was right or
wrong, he had gone on with the work as though the machinery was to be
recovered, yet all the time he was filled with sickening doubts. But it
seemed as though his inborn tenacity of purpose, his mulish obstinacy,
would not let him quit, driving him on to finish the flume and trestle
40 feet high with every green log and timber snaked in and put in place
by hand; to finish the pressure box and penstock and the 200 feet of
pipe-line riveted on the broiling hillside when the metal was almost too
hot to touch with the bare hand. The foundation of the power house was
ready for the machinery and the Pelton water-wheel had been installed.
It had taken time and money and grimy sweat. Was it all in vain?

Asking himself the question for which ten minutes at most would find the
answer Bruce sprang upon the tilting raft and nodded--

"Shove off."

As Bruce balanced himself on the raft while the Swede poled slowly
toward the rock that now arose from the water the size of a small house,
he was thankful that the face can be made at times to serve as so good a
mask. Not for the world would he have had John Johnson guess how afraid
he was, how actually scared to death when the raft bumped against the
huge brown rock and he knew that he must look over the side.

Holding the raft steady, Johnson kept his eyes on Bruce's face as he
peered into the river and searched the bottom. Not a muscle of Bruce's
face moved nor an eyelid flickered in the tense silence. Then he said
quietly--

"John,