toil plunged them. With the first light
the entire crew were at the banks of the river.

As soon as the wind died the logs had begun to drift slowly out into
the open water. The surface of the pond was covered with the scattered
timbers floating idly. After a few moments the clank of the bars and
ratchet was heard as two of the men raised the heavy sluice-gate on the
dam. A roar of water, momently increasing, marked the slow rise of the
barrier. A very imaginative man might then have made out a tendency
forward on the part of those timbers floating nearest the centre of the
pond. It was a very sluggish tendency, however, and the men watching
critically shook their heads.

Four more had by this time joined the two men who had raised the
gate, and all together, armed with long pike poles, walked out on the
funnel-shaped booms that should concentrate the logs into the chute.
Here they prodded forward the few timbers within reach, and waited for
more.

These were a long time coming. Members of the driving crew leaped
shouting from one log to another. Sometimes, when the space across
was too wide to jump, they propelled a log over either by rolling it,
paddling it, or projecting it by the shock of a leap on one end. In
accomplishing these feats of tight-rope balance, they stood upright and
graceful, quite unconscious of themselves, their bodies accustomed
by long habit to nice and instant obedience to the almost unconscious
impulses of the brain. Only their eyes, intent, preoccupied, blazed out
by sheer will-power the unstable path their owners should follow. Once
at the forefront of the drive, the men began vigorously to urge the logs
forward. This they accomplished almost entirely by main strength, for
the sluggish current gave them little aid. Under the pressure of their
feet as they pushed against their implements, the logs dipped, rolled,
and plunged. Nevertheless, they worked as surely from the decks of these
unstable craft as from the solid earth itself.

In this manner the logs in the centre of the pond were urged forward
until, above the chute, they caught the slightly accelerated current
which should bring them down to the pike-pole men at the dam.
Immediately, when this stronger influence was felt, the drivers
zigzagged back up stream to start a fresh batch. In the meantime a great
many logs drifted away to right and left into stagnant water, where
they lay absolutely motionless. The moving of them was deferre