eep water. When you
reflect that there were some twenty thousand pieces in the drive, and
that a good fifty per cent. of them balked below the rapids, you can see
that a rear crew of thirty men had its work cut out for it. Jimmy's
three days were three-fourths gone, and his job not more than a third
finished. McGann, the sluice boss, did a little figuring.

"She'll hang over thim twinty days," he confided to Jimmy. "Shure!"

Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe.
McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.

But the little man had been figuring, too, and his arrangements were
more elaborate and more nearly completed than McGann suspected. That
very morning he sauntered leisurely out over the rear logs, his hands in
his pockets. Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voiced
words to one or another of the men. The person addressed first looked
extremely astonished; then shouldered his peavy and started for camp,
leaving the diminished rear a prey to curiosity. Soon the word went
about. "Day and night work," they whispered, though it was a little
difficult to see the difference in ultimate effectiveness between a half
crew working all the time and a whole crew working half the time.

About now Daly began to worry. He took the train to Grand Rapids,
anxiety written deep in his brows. When he saw the little inadequate
crew pecking in a futile fashion at the logs winged out over the
shallows, he swore fervidly and sought Jimmy.

Jimmy appeared calm.

"We'll get them out all right, Mr. Daly," said he.

"Get them out!" growled Daly. "Sure! But when? We ain't _got_ all the
summer this season. Those logs have got to hit our booms in fourteen
days or they're no _good_ to us!"

"You'll have 'em," assured Jimmy.

Such talk made Daly tired, and he said so.

"Why, it'll take you a week to get her over those confounded shallows,"
he concluded. "You got to get more men, Jimmy."

"I've tried," answered the boss. "They ain't no more men to be had."

"Suffering Moses!" groaned the owner. "It means the loss of a
fifty-thousand-dollar contract to me. You needn't tell _me_! I've been
on the river all my life. I _know_ you can't get them off inside of a
week."

"I'll have 'em off to-morrow morning, but it may cost a little
something," asserted Jimmy, calmly.

Daly took one look at the mass of logs, and the fifteen men pulling out
an average of one a minute. Then he returned in disgust to the c