, then, that utter
defeat would be his fate. While he pondered, the pipe fell from his
hand, and the river's turmoil rang in deep pulsations through his
dreams. He was awakened suddenly by a wet hand on his shoulder, and,
scrambling out of his bunk on the instant, he saw Mattawa with a
lantern in his hand.

"Log right across the sluice-run," said the watcher. "More coming
along behind it. They'll sure get piling up."

Nasmyth did not remember that he gave any directions when he sprang,
half asleep, out of the shanty. The roar of water had a different note
in it, and the clangour of the iron sheet one of the men was pounding
rang out harshly. A half-moon hung above the black pines, and
dimly-seen men were flitting like shadows toward the waterside. They
appeared to know what it was advisable to do, but they stopped just a
moment on the edge of the torrent, for which nobody could have blamed
them. The water, streaked with smears of froth and foam, swirled by,
and there was a tumultuous white seething where the flood boiled
across the log in the midst of the stream. The log blocked the gap
left open to let the driftwood through, and, as Nasmyth knew, great
trees torn up in distant valleys were coming down with the flood. It
seemed to him that he could not reasonably have expected to clear that
obstacle with a battalion of log-drivers, and he had only a handful of
weary men. Still the men went in, floundering knee-deep in the flood,
along the submerged pile of stone and clutching at the piles that
bound it to save themselves when the stream threatened to sweep their
feet from under them, until they came to the gap where the great tree,
rolling in the grip of the torrent, thrashed its grinding branches
against the stone.

Then, though it was difficult to see how a man of them found a
foothold, or kept it on the heaving trunk, the big axes flashed and
fell, while a few shadowy figures ran along the top of the log to
attack the massy butt across the opening. It would have been arduous
labour in daylight and at low-water, but these were men who had faced
the most that flood and frost could do. They set about their task in
the dark, for that land would have been a wilderness still if the men
in it had shown themselves unduly careful of either life or limb.

The great branches yielded beneath the glinting blades, and went on
down river again, but Nasmyth, who felt the axe-haft slip in his
greasy hands, did not try to lead. I