h in the
rapidly rising Ottanoonsis; and from every brookside "landing" the
logs came down in black, tumbling swarms. Just below Conroy's Camp the
river wallowed round a narrow bend, tangled with slate ledges. It was
a nasty place enough at low water, but in freshet a roaring terror to
all the river-men. When the logs were running in any numbers, the bend
had to be watched with vigilance lest a jam should form, and the
waters be dammed back, and the lumber get "hung up" all over the
swamps of the upper reaches.

And here, now, in spite of the frantic efforts of Dave Logan and his
crew, the logs suddenly began to jam. Pitching downward as if
propelled by a pile-driver, certain great timbers drove their ends
between the upstanding strata of the slate, and held against the
torrent till others came and wedged them securely. The jam began
between two ledges in midstream, where no one could get near it. In a
few minutes the interlocked mass stretched from bank to bank, with the
torrent spurting and spouting through it in furious milk-white jets.
Log after log was chopped free by the axemen along the shore, but the
mass remained unshaken. Meanwhile the logs were gathering swiftly
behind, ramming down and solidifying the whole structure, and damming
back the flood till its heavy thunder diminished to the querulous
rattling of a mill-race. In a short time the river was packed solid
from shore to shore for several hundred yards above the brow of the
jam; and above that again the waters were rising at a rate which
threatened in a few hours to flood the valley and sweep away the camp
itself.

At this stage of affairs the Boss, axe in hand, picked his way across
the monstrous tangle of the face of the jam between the great white
jets, till he gained the centre of the structure. Here his practised
eye, with the aid of a perilous axe-stroke here and there,--strokes
which might possibly bring the whole looming mass down upon him in a
moment,--presently located the timbers which held the structure firm,
"the key-logs," as the men call them. These he marked with his axe.
Then, returning to the shore, he called for two volunteers to dare the
task of cutting these key-logs away.

Such a task is the most perilous that a lumberman, in all his daring
career, can be called upon to perform. So perilous is it that it is
always left to volunteers. Dave Logan had some brilliant feats of
jam-breaking to his credit, from the days before he was m