ing uproarious and impatient of volunteer
effort to humble Darrell's challenge. It wanted the best, and at once.
It began, with increasing insistence, to shout a name.

"Jimmy Powers!" it vociferated, "Jimmy Powers!"

And then by shamefaced bashfulness, by profane protest, by muttered and
comprehensive curses I knew that my companion on the other pile was
indicated.

A dozen men near at hand began to shout. "Here he is!" they cried. "Come
on, Jimmy." "Don't be a high banker." "Hang his hide on the fence."

Jimmy, still red and swearing, suffered himself to be pulled from his
elevation and disappeared in the throng. A moment later I caught his
head and shoulders pushing toward the boom piles, and so in a moment he
stepped warily aboard to face his antagonist.

This was evidently no question to be determined by the simplicity of
force or the simplicity of a child's trick. The two men stood
half-crouched, face to face, watching each other narrowly, but making no
move. To me they seemed like two wrestlers sparring for an opening.
Slowly the log revolved one way; then slowly the other. It was a mere
courtesy of salute. All at once Dick birled three rapid strokes from
left to right as though about to roll the log, leaped into the air and
landed square with both feet on the other slant of the timber. Jimmy
Powers felt the jar, and acknowledged it by a spasmodic jerk with which
he counterbalanced Darrell's weight. But he was not thrown.

As though this daring and hazardous manoeuvre had opened the combat,
both men sprang to life. Sometimes the log rolled one way, sometimes the
other, sometimes it jerked from side to side like a crazy thing, but
always with the rapidity of light, always in a smother of spray and
foam. The decided _spat, spat, spat_ of the reversing blows from the
caulked boots sounded like picket firing. I could not make out the
different leads, feints, parries, and counters of this strange method of
boxing, nor could I distinguish to whose initiative the various
evolutions of that log could be ascribed. But I retain still a vivid
mental picture of two men nearly motionless above the waist, nearly
vibrant below it, dominating the insane gyrations of a stick of pine.

The crowd was appreciative and partisan--for Jimmy Powers. It howled
wildly, and rose thereby to even higher excitement. Then it forgot its
manners utterly and groaned when it made out that a sudden splash
represented its favorite, while the