s scrambling
wildly to reach and hold the handle as it beat the air. He got it--held
it for a second--then it was wrenched out of his hand. He tried again
and again before he held it, but finally Bruce said huskily----

"They'll make it--they'll make it sure if Saunders can hold her a little
longer off the rocks."

His own boat had reached quieter water. Simultaneously, it seemed, both
he and his helper thought of Smaltz. They took their eyes from the boat
in trouble and the hind-sweepman's jaw dropped. He said
unemotionally--dully--as he might have said--"I'm sick; I'm
hungry"--"They've struck."

Yes--they had struck. If Bruce had not been so absorbed he might have
heard the bottom splintering when she hit the rock.

Her bow shot high into the air and settled at the stern. As she slid
off, tilted, filled and sunk, Smaltz and Porcupine Jim both jumped. Then
the river made a bend which shut it all from Bruce's sight. It was half
a mile before he found a landing. He tied up and walked back, unexcited,
not hurrying, with a curious quietness inside.

Smaltz and Jim were fighting when he got there. Smaltz was sitting
astride the latter's chest. There were epithets and recriminations,
accusations, counter-charges, oaths. The Swede was crying and a little
stream of red was trickling toward his ear. Bruce eyed him calmly,
contemplatively, thinking what a face he made, and how ludicrous he
looked with the sand matted in his corn-silk hair and covering him like
a tamale casing of corn-meal as it stuck to his wet clothes.

He left them and walked up the river where the rock rose like a monument
to his hopes. With his hands on his hips he watched the water rippling
around it, slipping over the spot where the boat lay buried with some
portion of every machine upon the works while like a bolt from the blue
the knowledge came to him that since the old Edison type was obsolete
the factories no longer made duplicates of the parts.

XX

"THE FORLORN HOPE"

It was August. "Old Turtle-back" was showing up at the diggin's and the
river would reach low water-mark with less than half a foot.

Pole in hand, big John Johnson of the crew stood on the rocking raft
anchored below The Big Mallard and opposite the rock where the boat had
sunk and smiled his solemn smile at Bruce.

"Don't know but what we ought to name her and break a bottle of ketchup
over the bow of this here craft a'fore we la'nch her."

"The Forlorn Hope, T