"See?" he ordered, as he nicked it with his axe, "you cut heem as far above the ground as he is thick through. Now, first, the undercut."
"Looks like an overcut to me."
"Oh, ho! Ah, oui, so eet is! But eet is called the undercut. Eet makes the tree fall the way you want heem!"
The axe gleamed in blow after blow. A deep incision appeared in the trunk of the tree, and at the base of it Ba'tiste started the saw, Barry working on the other end with his good arm. Ten minutes of work and they switched to the other side. Here no "undercut" was made; the saw bit into the bark and deep toward the heart of the tree in a smooth, sharp line that progressed farther, farther—
"Look out!"
A crackling sound had come from above. Ba'tiste abandoned the saw, and with one great leap caught Houston and pulled him far to one side, as with a roar, the spruce seemed to veritably disintegrate, its trunk spreading in great, splintered slabs, and the tree proper crashing to the ground in the opposite direction to which it should have fallen, breaking as it came. A moment Ba'tiste stood, with his arm still about the younger man, waiting for the dead branches, severed from other trees, to cease falling, and the disturbed needles and dust of the forest to settle. Then, pulling his funny little knit cap far down over his straggly hair, he came forth, to stand in meditation upon the largest portion of the shattered tree.
"Eet break up like an ice jam!" came at last. "That tree, he is not made of wood. Peuff! He is of glass!"
Barry joined him, studying the splintered fragments of the spruce, suddenly to bend forward in wonderment.
"That's queer. Here's a railroad spike driven clear into the heart."
"Huh? What's that?" Ba'tiste bent beside him to examine the rusty spike, then hurried to a minute examination of the rest of the tree. "And another," came at last. "And more!"