was with his overcoat, old Hector found it a
prodigious task to reach the boom; as he clung to the boom-stick he
could make out the figure of a man with a pike pole coming toward him
in long leaps across the logs. And then old Hector noticed something
else.

He had swum to the outer edge of the log boom and grasped the light
boom-stick, dozens of which, chained end to end, formed the floating
enclosure in which the log supply was stored. The moment he rested his
weight on this boom-stick, however, one end of it submerged
suddenly--wherefore The Laird knew that the impact of the motor-boat
had broken a link of the boom and that this broken end was now
sweeping outward and downward, with the current releasing the millions
of feet of stored logs. Within a few minutes, provided he should keep
afloat, he would be in the midst of these tremendous Juggernauts, for,
clinging to the end of the broken boom he was gradually describing a
circle on the outside of the log field, swinging from beyond the
middle of the river in to the left-hand bank; presently, when the boom
should have drifted its maximum distance he would be hung up
stationary in deep water while the released logs bore down upon him
with the current and gently shoulder him into eternity.

He clawed his way along the submerging boom-stick to its other end,
where it was linked with its neighbor, and the combined buoyancy of
both boom-sticks was sufficient to float him.

"Careful," he called to the man leaping over the log-field toward
him. "The boom is broken! Careful, I tell you! The logs are moving
out--they're slipping apart. Be careful."

Even as he spoke, The Laird realized that the approaching rescuer
would not heed him. He _had_ to make speed out to the edge of the
moving logs; if he was to rescue the man clinging to the boom-sticks
he must take a chance on those long leaps through the dusk; he _must_
reach The Laird before too much open water developed between the
moving logs.

Only a trained river man could have won to him in such a brief space
of time; only an athlete could have made the last flying leap across
six feet of dark water to a four-foot log that was bearing gently
down, butt first, on the figure clinging to the boom-stick. His caulks
bit far up the side of the log and the force of his impact started it
rolling; yet even as he clawed his way to the top of the log and got
it under control the iron head of his long pike pole drove into the
boo