drive, should release them and give them their chance of display, their brief
moment of notoriety, their opportunity of interesting, amusing, exciting, and
exasperating the onlookers by their antics.

Heaps of logs had been cast up on the rocks below the dam, where they lay in
hopeless confusion, adding nothing, however, to the problem of the moment, for
they too bided their time. If they had possessed wisdom, discretion, and
caution, they might have slipped gracefully over the falls and, steering clear
of the hidden ledges (about which it would seem they must have heard whispers
from the old pine trees along the river), have kept a straight course and
reached their destination without costing the Edgewood Lumber Company a small
fortune. Or, if they had inclined toward a jolly and adventurous career, they
could have joined one of the various jams or "bungs," stimulated by the
thought that any one of them might be a key-log, holding for a time the entire
mass in its despotic power. But they had been stranded early in the game, and,
after lying high and dry for weeks, would be picked off one by one and sent
downstream.

In the tumultuous boil, the foaming hubbub and flurry at the foot of the
falls, one enormous peeled log wallowed up and clown like a huge rhinoceros,
greatly pleasing the children by its clumsy cavortings. Some conflict of
opposing forces kept it ever in motion, yet never set it free. Below the
bridge were always the real battle-grounds, the scenes of the first and the
fiercest conflicts. A ragged ledge of rock, standing well above the yeasty
torrent, marked the middle of the river. Stephen had been stranded there once,
just at dusk, on a stormy afternoon in spring. A jam had broken under the men,
and Stephen, having taken too great risks, had been caught on the moving mass,
and, leaping from log to log, his only chance for life had been to find a
footing on Gray Rock, which was nearer than the shore.