quick, and have Dave hustle
together his driver crew."

"What you going to do?" asked Wallace.

"I got to strengthen the booms," explained the mill foreman. "We'll
drive some piles across between the cribs."

"Is there any danger?"

"Oh, no, the river would have to rise a good deal higher than she is now
to make current enough to hurt. They've had a hard rain up above. This
will go down in a few hours."

After a time the tug puffed up to the booms, escorting the pile driver.
The latter towed a little raft of long sharpened piles, which it at once
began to drive in such positions as would most effectually strengthen
the booms. In the meantime the thunder-heads had slyly climbed the
heavens, so that a sudden deluge of rain surprised the workmen. For an
hour it poured down in torrents; then settled to a steady gray beat.
Immediately the aspect had changed. The distant rise of land was veiled;
the brown expanse of logs became slippery and glistening; the river
below the booms was picked into staccato points by the drops; distant
Superior turned lead color and seemed to tumble strangely athwart the
horizon.

Solly, the tug captain, looked at his mooring hawsers and then at the
nearest crib.

"She's riz two inches in th' las' two hours," he announced, "and
she's runnin' like a mill race." Solly was a typical north-country tug
captain, short and broad, with a brown, clear face, and the steadiest
and calmest of steel-blue eyes. "When she begins to feel th' pressure
behind," he went on, "there's goin' to be trouble."

Towards dusk she began to feel that pressure. Through the rainy twilight
the logs could be seen raising their ghostly arms of protest. Slowly,
without tumult, the jam formed. In the van the logs crossed silently; in
the rear they pressed in, were sucked under in the swift water, and came
to rest at the bottom of the river. The current of the river began to
protest, pressing its hydraulics through the narrowing crevices. The
situation demanded attention.

A breeze began to pull off shore in the body of rain. Little by little
it increased, sending the water by in gusts, ruffling the already
hurrying river into greater haste, raising far from the shore dimly
perceived white-caps. Between the roaring of the wind, the dash of rain,
and the rush of the stream, men had to shout to make themselves heard.

"Guess you'd better rout out the boss," screamed Solly to Wallace
Carpenter; "this damn water's comin' up