lly to alter their positions, riding the changing timbers
bent-kneed, as a circus rider treads his four galloping horses.

Then all at once down by the face something crashed. The entire stream
became alive. It hissed and roared, it shrieked, groaned and grumbled.
At first slowly, then more rapidly, the very forefront of the center
melted inward and forward and downward until it caught the fierce rush
of the freshet and shot out from under the jam. Far up-stream, bristling
and formidable, the tons of logs, grinding savagely together, swept
forward.

The six men and Bryan Moloney--who, it will be remembered, were on
top--worked until the last moment. When the logs began to cave under
them so rapidly that even the expert rivermen found difficulty in
"staying on top," the foreman set the example of hunting safety.

"She 'pulls,' boys," he yelled.

Then in a manner wonderful to behold, through the smother of foam and
spray, through the crash and yell of timbers protesting the flood's
hurrying, through the leap of destruction, the drivers zigzagged calmly
and surely to the shore.

All but Jimmy Powers. He poised tense and eager on the crumbling face
of the jam. Almost immediately he saw what he wanted, and without pause
sprang boldly and confidently ten feet straight downward, to alight with
accuracy on a single log floating free in the current. And then in the
very glory and chaos of the jam itself he was swept down-stream.

After a moment the constant acceleration in speed checked, then
commenced perceptibly to slacken. At once the rest of the crew began
to ride down-stream. Each struck the caulks of his river boots strongly
into a log, and on such unstable vehicles floated miles with the
current. From time to time, as Bryan Moloney indicated, one of them went
ashore. There, usually at a bend of the stream where the likelihood of
jamming was great, they took their stands. When necessary, they ran
out over the face of the river to separate a congestion likely to cause
trouble. The rest of the time they smoked their pipes.

At noon they ate from little canvas bags which had been filled that
morning by the cookee. At sunset they rode other logs down the river
to where their camp had been made for them. There they ate hugely,
hung their ice-wet garments over a tall framework constructed around a
monster fire, and turned in on hemlock branches.

All night long the logs slipped down the moonlit current, silently,
swiftl