forty
feet from shore when Bruce cried sharply:

"Hold her steady! Wait!"

The needle wavered--agitated unmistakably--then the parts of the dynamos
and the motor in the boat dragged the reluctant point of steel slowly,
flutteringly, but surely, from its affinity, the magnetic North.

Bruce gulped at something in his throat before he spoke----

"John, we've GOT her!"

"I _see_ her!" Johnson executed a kind of dance on the rocking raft.
"Lookee," he pointed into the exasperatingly dense water, "see her
there--like a shadow--her bow is shoved up four--five feet above her
stern. Got her?"

Bruce nodded, then they looked at each other joyfully, and Bruce
remembered afterward that they had giggled hysterically like two boys.

"The water'll drop a foot yet," Bruce said excitedly. "Can you dive?"

"First cousin to a musk-rat," the Swede declared.

"We'll build a raft like a hollow square, use a tripod and bring up the
chain blocks. What we can't raise with a grappling-hook, we'll go after.
John, we're going to get it--every piece!"

"Bet yer life we'll get her!" John cried responsively, "if I has to git
drunk to do it and stand to my neck in water for a week."

XXI

TOY

Bruce paused in the blithesome task of packing six by eights to look at
the machinery which lay like a pile of junk on the river bank. Each time
he passed he looked at it and always he felt the same hot impatience and
burning sense of irritation.

The days, the weeks, months were going by and nothing moved.

Two months Jennings had named as the maximum of time required to set up
the machines and have the plant in working order. "We'll be throwin'
dirt by the middle of July," he had said, confidently, and it was now
close to the middle of September. The lost machinery was no longer an
excuse, as every piece had been recovered by grappling and diving, and
landed safely at the diggin's.

Twice the whole crew save Jennings had dragged a heavy barge fifteen
miles up the river, advancing only a pull at a time against the strong
current, windlassing over the rapids with big John Johnson poling like
mad to keep the boat off the rocks; sleeping at night in wet clothing,
waking stiff and jaded as stage horses to go at it again. Six days they
had been getting up, and a little over an hour coming down, while two
trips had been necessary owing to the low stage of the water, which now
made the running of a deeply loaded boat impossible. It had be