, Archie Harris, Long Pine Jim, Big Nolan, and Mike Moloney,
the brother of Bryan, were in worse case. They were, as has been said,
engaged in "flattening" part of the jam about eight or ten rods below
the face of it. When they finally understood that the affair was one of
escape, they ran towards the jam, hoping to climb out. Then the crash
came. They heard the roar of the waters, the wrecking of the timbers,
they saw the logs bulge outwards in anticipation of the break.
Immediately they turned and fled, they knew not where.

All but Jimmy Powers. He stopped short in his tracks, and threw his
battered old felt hat defiantly full into the face of the destruction
hanging over him. Then, his bright hair blowing in the wind of death,
he turned to the spectators standing helpless and paralyzed, forty feet
above him.

It was an instant's impression,--the arrested motion seen in the flash
of lightning--and yet to the onlookers it had somehow the quality of
time. For perceptible duration it seemed to them they stared at the
contrast between the raging hell above and the yet peaceable river bed
below. They were destined to remember that picture the rest of their
natural lives, in such detail that each one of them could almost
have reproduced it photographically by simply closing his eyes. Yet
afterwards, when they attempted to recall definitely the impression,
they knew it could have lasted but a fraction of a second, for the
reason that, clear and distinct in each man's mind, the images of
the fleeing men retained definite attitudes. It was the instantaneous
photography of events.

"So long, boys," they heard Jimmy Powers's voice. Then the rope Thorpe
had thrown fell across a caldron of tortured waters and of tossing logs.

Chapter XLIX

During perhaps ten seconds the survivors watched the end of Thorpe's
rope trailing in the flood. Then the young man with a deep sigh began to
pull it towards him.

At once a hundred surmises, questions, ejaculations broke out.

"What happened?" cried Wallace Carpenter.

"What was that man's name?" asked the Chicago journalist with the eager
instinct of his profession.

"This is terrible, terrible, terrible!" a white-haired physician from
Marquette kept repeating over and over.

A half dozen ran towards the point of the cliff to peer down stream, as
though they could hope to distinguish anything in that waste of flood
water.

"The dam's gone out," replied Thorpe. "I don't un