eir peaveys
into the soft pine; jerking, pulling, lifting, sliding the great logs
from their places. Thirty feet below, under the threatening face, six
other men coolly picked out and set adrift, one by one, the timbers
not inextricably imbedded. From time to time the mass creaked, settled,
perhaps even moved a foot or two; but always the practiced rivermen,
after a glance, bent more eagerly to their work.

Outlined against the sky, big Bryan Moloney stood directing the work. He
had gone at the job on the bias of indirection, picking out a passage at
either side that the center might the more easily "pull." He knew by
the tenseness of the log he stood on that, behind the jam, power had
gathered sufficient to push the whole tangle down-stream. Now he was
offering it the chance.

Suddenly the six men below the jam scattered. Four of them, holding
their peaveys across their bodies, jumped lightly from one floating log
to another in the zigzag to shore. When they stepped on a small log they
re-leaped immediately, leaving a swirl of foam where the little timber
had sunk under them; when they encountered one larger, they hesitated
for a barely perceptible instant. Thus their progression was of
fascinating and graceful irregularity. The other two ran the length of
their footing, and, overleaping an open of water, landed heavily and
firmly on the very ends of two small floating logs. In this manner the
force of the jump rushed the little timbers end-on through the water.
The two men, maintaining marvellously their balance, were thus ferried
to within leaping distance of the other shore.

In the meantime a barely perceptible motion was communicating itself
from one particle to another through the center of the jam. A cool and
observant spectator might have imagined that the broad timber carpet was
changing a little its pattern, just as the earth near the windows of
an arrested railroad train seems for a moment to retrogress. The crew
redoubled its exertions, clamping its peaveys here and there, apparently
at random, but in reality with the most definite of purposes. A sharp
crack exploded immediately underneath. There could no longer exist any
doubt as to the motion, although it was as yet sluggish, glacial. Then
in silence a log shifted--in silence and slowly--but with irresistible
force. Jimmy Powers quietly stepped over it, just as it menaced his
leg. Other logs in all directions up-ended. The jam crew were forced
continua