he
wings stranded. The hope was groundless.

"We'll have to shoot," Shearer reluctantly decided.

The men were withdrawn. Scotty Parsons cut a sapling twelve feet long,
and trimmed it. Big Junko thawed his dynamite at a little fire, opening
the ends of the packages in order that the steam generated might escape.
Otherwise the pressure inside the oiled paper of the package was capable
of exploding the whole affair. When the powder was warm, Scotty bound
twenty of the cartridges around the end of the sapling, adjusted a fuse
in one of them, and soaped the opening to exclude water. Then Big Junko
thrust the long javelin down into the depths of the jam, leaving a thin
stream of smoke behind him as he turned away. With sinister, evil eye he
watched the smoke for an instant, then zigzagged awkwardly over the jam,
the long, ridiculous tails of his brown cutaway coat flopping behind him
as he leaped. A scant moment later the hoarse dynamite shouted.

Great chunks of timber shot to an inconceivable height; entire logs
lifted bodily into the air with the motion of a fish jumping; a fountain
of water gleamed against the sun and showered down in fine rain. The jam
shrugged and settled. That was all; the "shot" had failed.

The men ran forward, examining curiously the great hole in the log
formation.

"We'll have to flood her," said Thorpe.

So all the gates of the dam were raised, and the torrent tried its hand.
It had no effect. Evidently the affair was not one of violence, but of
patience. The crew went doggedly to work.

Day after day the CLANK, CLANK, CLINK of the peaveys sounded with the
regularity of machinery. The only practicable method was to pick away
the flank logs, leaving a long tongue pointing down-stream from the
center to start when it would. This happened time and again, but always
failed to take with it the main jam. It was cruel hard work; a man who
has lifted his utmost strength into a peavey knows that. Any but the
Fighting Forty would have grumbled.

Collins, the bookkeeper, came up to view the tangle. Later a
photographer from Marquette took some views, which, being exhibited,
attracted a great deal of attention, so that by the end of the week a
number of curiosity seekers were driving over every day to see the Big
Jam. A certain Chicago journalist in search of balsam health of lungs
even sent to his paper a little item. This, unexpectedly, brought
Wallace Carpenter to the spot. Although reassured as