And in the midst of this strange quiescence a gong struck faintly, deep in the bowels of the Kowloon, and when the deckhands flicked off the mooring lines she backed slowly out into the channel, out into the gathering dusk, the jazz tunes stilled, her guests standing quietly in a group by the after rail.
CHAPTER XXX
As the reaping machines pass over a field of wheat at harvest time mowing swath after swath until there is nothing left but bristling stubble, so the men and machinery under Rod's direction mowed the forest, harvesting that great crop which the centuries had matured. Day by day the logs poured into the booming ground. Week by week tugs departed, towing enormous rafts. The mills chewed up these logs and spewed them forth as squared timbers, in wide boards and narrow, in beautifully finished materials out of which carpenters in far cities fashioned roofs over the heads of other men.
To Rod these trees had been living things, dumb giants brooding over the earth they shadowed. He had stood among them with a humbled spirit. As a child he had moved in that silence and shade with a strange awe, with a mysterious sense of possession and of being himself possessed. A childish fancy? Perhaps. But it lingered still, recurred often. He could imagine the spirit of the forest putting forth a voiceless protest at all this havoc. He could dismiss these fancies intellectually, but his mind was powerless to put aside emotion. His brain could support action with the stern logic of necessity; it could not always banish the pang from his heart.
If it were sentimentality to regret ravished beauty he pleaded guilty. He recalled the protest that burst from a million throats when the cathedral of Rheims crumbled under shell fire. Here was something as beautiful, as inspiring, as much a glorious monument of the centuries as anything of wood and stone wrought by the hands of man. Here was a majesty of form and a beauty of color man might copy but could never surpass. It was being obliterated with considered purpose.
Mary encompassed it in a sentence; with a sigh.
"It is like seeing a painting you have treasured in your home for a lifetime ripped out of its frame, defaced, torn to bits by some vandal."
Summer merged into autumn. September rains rolled up a veil of smoke from scattered forest fires. The coast line emerged clear and sharp from the blur. The maples put on their russet gowns. Equinoctial gales harried the coast briefly and left still days shot through with a waning sun. And whether in sun or storm the wheels on Dent Island turned unremittingly. With sweaty bodies and untiring tools of steel the loggers plied their trade. The booms accumulated and went their way. Money poured in. From the material angle Dent Island was a gold mine. But like mines that have been, the vein was pinching out.
On a day in October Rod saw the last of the great booms draw clear in the wake of a steam tug. Before it was out of the Narrows he passed it on the Haida, southward bound. Very soon now he could write finis to another chapter in the sequence. Slowly, with a pent eagerness, he was placing his levers to right the inverted pyramid.