waters.
Then, with a creak and a groan, the jam moved, hesitated, moved again;
finally, urged by the frantic river, went out in a majestic crashing and
battering of logs.

At the first movement Newmark expected the rivermen to make their
escape. Instead, they stood at attention, their peavies poised, watching
cat-eyed the symptoms of the break. Twice or thrice several of the
men, observing something not evident to Newmark's unpractised eye, ran
forward, used their peavies vigorously for a moment or so, and stood
back to watch the result. Only at the very last, when it would seem that
some of them must surely he caught, did the river-jacks, using their
peavy-shafts as balancing poles, zigzag calmly to shore across the
plunging logs. Newmark seemed impressed.

"That was a close shave," said he to the last man ashore.

"What?" inquired the riverman. "Didn't see it. Somebody fall down?"

"Why, no," explained Newmark; "getting in off those logs without getting
caught."

"Oh!" said the man indifferently, turning away.

The going out of the jam drained the water from the lower floors of the
mill; the upper stories and the grain were still safe.

By evening the sluice-gate had been roughly provided with pole guides
down which to slide to the bed of the river. The following morning saw
the work going on as methodically as ever. During the night a very
good head of water had gathered behind the lowered gate. The rear crew
brought down the afterguard of logs to the pond. The sluicers with their
long pike-poles thrust the logs into the chute. The jam crew, scattered
for many miles along the lower stretches, kept the drive going; running
out over the surface of the river like water-bugs to thrust apart logs
threatening to lock; leaning for hours on the shafts of their peavies
watching contemplatively the orderly ranks as they drifted by, sleepy,
on the bosom of the river; occasionally gathering, as the filling of
the river gave warning, to break a jam. By the end of the second day the
pond was clear, and as Charlie's wanigan was drifting toward the chute,
the first of Johnson's drive floated into the head of the pond.

V

Charlie's wanigan, in case you do not happen to know what such a thing
may be, was a scow about twenty feet long by ten wide. It was
very solidly constructed of hewn timbers, square at both ends, was
inconceivably clumsy, and weighed an unbelievable number of pounds.
When loaded, it carried all