forces into whose crushing reach a single misstep would bring them.
The movement accelerated each instant, as the music of the play
hastens to the climax. Wood fibres smashed. The whole mass seemed
to sink down and forward into a boiling of 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