kmen had divided into two hostile camps, but there was a growl
of admiring wonder from friends and foes alike when two figures,
balancing bright axes, stood high up on the pier slides ready to leap
down upon the working logs. Then disjointed cries went up: "Too late!"
"You'll be smashed flatter than a flapjack when the jam breaks up!"
"Get hold of the fools, somebody!" "Take their axes away!"

"I'll brain the first man who touches mine," threatened Thurston,
turning savagely upon those who approached him with remonstrances, and
there was a simultaneous murmur from all the assembly when the two
adventurous men dropped upon the timber. The logs rolled, groaned, and
heaved beneath them and Thurston, trusting to the creeper spikes upon
his heels, sprang from one great tree trunk to another behind his
companion, who had a longer experience of the perilous work of
log-driving. Here a gap, filled with spouting foam, opened up before
him; there a trunk upon which he was about to step rolled over and
sank. But he worked his way forward towards the center of the fir
which keyed the growing mass. This log was many feet in girth.
Pressed down level with the water, it was already bending like a
slackly-strung bow.

The example proved inspiring. Thurston's assistants were sturdy,
fearless men, who often risked their lives in wresting a living from
the forest, so several among them prepared to follow. Two seamen
deserters sprang out from the ranks of the mutineers. One stalwart
forest rancher, however, tripped his comrade up, and sat upon his
prostrate form shouting, "You'll stop just where you are, you blame
idiot! You couldn't do nothing if you got there. Hardly room for them
two fellows already where they can get at the log!"

The remaining volunteers saw the force of this argument and when
somebody increased the blast of the lamp so that the roaring column of
flame leapt up higher, the men stood very still, staring at the two who
had now gained the center of the partly submerged log.

It requires considerable practice to acquire full mastery of the
long-hafted ax, but Thurston, who was stout of arm and keen of eye, had
managed to earn his bread with it one winter in an Ontario logging
camp. When he swung aloft the heavy wedge of steel, it reflected the
blast lamp's radiance, making red flashes as it circled round his head.
It came down hissing close past his knee. Mattawa Tom's blade crossed
it when it rose, and th