behind the rear of the drive. All about floated the logs, caroming
gently one against the other, shifting and changing the pattern of
their brown against the blue of the water. The current flowed
strongly and smoothly, but without obstruction. Everything went
well. The banks slipped by silently and mysteriously, like the
unrolling of a panorama--little strips of marshland, stretches of
woodland where the great trees leaned out over the river, thickets
of overflowed swampland with the water rising and draining among
roots in a strange regularity of its own. The sun shone warm.
There was no wind. Newmark wrung out his outer garments, and basked
below the gunwale. Zeke and his companion pulled spasmodically on
the sweeps. Charlie, having regained his equanimity together with
his old brown derby, which he came upon floating sodden in an eddy,
marched up and down the broad gunwale with his pike-pole, thrusting
away such logs as threatened interference.

"Well," said he at last, "we better make camp. We'll be down in the
jam pretty soon."

The cookees abandoned the sweeps in favour of more pike-poles. By
pushing and pulling on the logs floating about them, they managed to
work the wanigan in close to the bank.

Charlie, a coil of rope in his hand, surveyed the prospects.

"We'll stop right down there by that little knoll," he announced.

He leaped ashore, made a turn around a tree, and braced himself to
snub the boat, but unfortunately he had not taken into consideration
the "two ton" of water soaked up by the cargo. The weight of the