the timber to the
mills; bateau men, who laughed in the face of death as they swarmed
over a jam; key-log men, who scorned dynamite; bend watchers, whose
duty it is to stay awake through the long, warm days and prevent the
formation of jams as the drive shoots by--each selected with an eye to
previous experience and physical fitness.

For, among all occupations of men, log driving stands unique for its
hardships of peril, discomfort, and bone-racking toil.

From the breaking out of the rollways until the last log slips smoothly
into its place in the boom-raft, no man's life is safe.

Yet men fight for a place on the drive--for the privilege of being
soaked to the bone for days at a time in ice-cold water; of being
crushed to a pulp between grinding logs; of being drowned in
white-water rapids, where a man must stand, his log moving at the speed
of an express train, time and again shooting half out of water to meet
the spray of the next rock-tossed wave; of making hair-trigger
decisions, when an instant's hesitation means death, as his log rushes
under the low-hanging branches of a "sweeper."

For pure love of adventure they fight--and that a few more dollars may
find their way into the tills of the Jake Sontos of the water-front
dives. For among these men the baiting of death is the excitement of
life, and their pleasures are the savage pleasures of firstlings.

Those who were not of the drive were handed their vouchers and hauled
to Hilarity, while those who remained busied themselves in the packing
and storing of gear; for, in the fall, the crew would return to renew
the attack on the timber.

Followed, then, days of waiting.

The two bateaux--the cook's bateau, with its camp stove and store of
supplies; and the big bateau, with its thousand feet of inch and a half
manila line coiled for instant use, whose thick, flaring sides and
floor of selected timber were built to override the shock and battering
of a thousand pitching logs--were carried to the bank ready for
launching.

The sodden snow settled heavily, and around the base of stumps and the
trunks of standing trees appeared rings of bare ground, while the
course of the skidways and cross-hauls stood out sharp and black, like
great veins in the clearing.

Each sag and depression became a pond, and countless rills and rivulets
gurgled riverward, bank-full with sparkling snow-water.

Over the frozen surface of the river it flowed and wore at the
shore-b