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“She’ll hang over thim twinty days,” he confided to Jimmy. “Shure!”

Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe. McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.

But the little man had been figuring, too, and his arrangements were more elaborate and more nearly completed than McGann suspected. That very morning he sauntered leisurely out over the rear logs, his hands in his pockets. Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voiced words to one or another of the men. The person addressed first looked extremely astonished; then shouldered his peavy and started for camp, leaving the diminished rear a prey to curiosity. Soon the word went about. “Day and night work,” they whispered, though it was a little difficult to see the difference in ultimate effectiveness between a half crew working all the time and a whole crew working half the time.

About now Daly began to worry. He took the train to Grand Rapids, anxiety written deep in his brows. When he saw the little inadequate crew pecking in a futile fashion at the logs winged out over the shallows, he swore fervidly and sought Jimmy.

Jimmy appeared calm.

“We’ll get them out all right, Mr. Daly,” said he.

“Get them out!” growled Daly. “Sure! But when? We ain’t got all the summer this season. Those logs have got to hit our booms in fourteen days or they’re no good to us!”

“You’ll have ’em,” assured Jimmy.

Such talk made Daly tired, and he said so.

“Why, it’ll take you a week to get her over those confounded shallows,” he concluded. “You got to get more men, Jimmy.”

“I’ve tried,” answered the boss. “They ain’t no more men to be had.”

“Suffering Moses!” groaned the owner. “It means the loss of a fifty-thousand-dollar contract to me. You needn’t tell me! I’ve been on the river all my life. I know you can’t get them off inside of a week.”

“I’ll have ’em off to-morrow morning, but it may cost a little something,” asserted Jimmy, calmly.

Daly took one look at the mass of logs, and the fifteen men pulling out an average of one a minute. Then he returned in disgust to the city, where he began to adjust his ideas to a loss on his contract.

At sundown the rear crew quit work, and swarmed to the encampment of white tents on the river-bank. There they hung wet clothes over a big skeleton framework built around a monster fire, and ate a dozen eggs apiece as a side dish to supper, and smoked pipes of strong “Peerless” tobacco, and swapped yarns, and sang songs, and asked questions. To the latter they received no satisfactory replies. The crew that had been laid off knew nothing. It appeared they were to go to work after supper. After supper, however, Jimmy told them to turn in and get a little more sleep. They did turn in, and speedily forgot to puzzle.

At midnight, however, Jimmy entered the big tent quietly with a lantern, touching each of the fresh men on the shoulder. They arose without comment, and followed him outside. There they were given tools. Then the little band filed silently down river under the stars.

Jimmy led them, his hands deep in his pockets, puffing white steam-clouds at regular intervals from his “meerschaum” pipe. After twenty minutes they struck the Water Works, then the board-walk of Canal Street. The word passed back for silence. Near the Oriole Factory their leader suddenly dodged in behind the piles of sawed lumber, motioning them to haste. A moment later a fat and dignified officer passed, swinging his club. After the policeman had gone, Jimmy again took up his march at the head of fifteen men, now thoroughly aroused to the fact that something unusual was afoot. Soon a faint roar lifted the night silence. They crossed a street, and a moment after stood at one end of the power-dam.

The long smooth water shot over, like fluid steel, silent and inevitable, mirroring distorted flashes of light that were the stars. Below, it broke in white turmoil, shouting defiance at the calm velvet rush above. Ten seconds later the current was broken. A man, his heels caught against the combing, up to his knees in water, was braced back at the exact angle to withstand the rush. Two other men passed down to him a short heavy timber. A third, plunging his arms and shoulders into the liquid, nailed it home with heavy, inaudible strokes. As though by magic a second timber braced the first, bolted through sockets already cut for it. The workers moved on eight feet, then another eight, then another. More men entered the water. A row of heavy, slanted supports grew out from the shoulder of the dam, dividing the waters into long, arrow-shaped furrows of light. At half-past twelve Tom Clute was swept over the dam into the eddy. He swam ashore. Purdy took his place.