f we ARE goin' to hell!"

When the SPRAY shouldered the scow back to position that one pile
was left standing upright in the channel, a monument to the blind
determination of the man.

Fortunately the wing break carried with it but a few logs; but it
sufficed to show, if demonstration were needed, what would happen if any
more serious break should occur.

Orde was everywhere. Long since he had lost his hat; and over his
forehead and into his eyes the strands of his hair whipped tousled and
unkempt. Miles and miles he travelled; running along the tops of the
booms, over the surface of the jam, spying the weakening places, and
hurrying to them a rescue. He seemed tireless, omnipresent, alive to
every need. It was as though his personality alone held in correlation
these struggling forces; as though were he to relax for an instant his
effort they would burst forth with the explosion of long-pent energies.

Toward noon the piles gave out again.

"Where in HELL is Newmark!" exploded Orde, and immediately was himself
again, controlled and resourceful. He sent North and a crew of men to
cut piles from standing timber in farm wood lots near the river.

"Haul them out with your winch," said he. "If the owners object, stand
them off with your peavies. Get them anyway."

About three of the afternoon the LUCY BELLE splattered up stream from
the village, carrying an excursion to see the jam. Captain Simpson
brought her as close in as possible. The waves raised by her awkward
paddle-wheel and her clumsy lines surged among the logs and piles. Orde
looked on this with distrust.

"Go tell him to pull out of that," he instructed Jimmy Powers "The
confounded old fool ought to know better than that. Tell him it's
dangerous. If the jam goes out, it'll carry him to Kingdom Come."

Jimmy Powers returned red-faced from his interview.

"He told me to go to hell," he said shortly.

"Oh, he did," snapped Orde. "I should think we had enough without that
old idiot!"

With the short nervous leaps of a suppressed anger he ran down to where
the SPRITE had just towed the Number One driver into a new position.

"Lay me alongside the LUCY BELLE," he told Marsh.

But Simpson, in a position of importance at last, was disinclined to
listen. He had worn his blue clothes and brass buttons for a good many
years in charge only of boxes and barrels. Now at a stroke he found
himself commander over tenscore people. Likewise, at fifty cents a head,