The dinner was eaten in doors by all except Harry Ridsdale, who sat outside acting as a sentinel, and took his dinner on a log. After dinner, and again the next morning, Tom volunteered to act as sentinel, inasmuch as the Doctor would not yet let him chop, or hew ties, or lift logs, or do any other work that might reopen his now nearly healed wounds.
Promptly at five minutes after three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, the first product of their industry was sent thundering down the chute. It was a huge timber thirty feet long and full two and a half feet thick at its smaller end. Jack had cut it at a point very near the mouth of the chute, and by united efforts, with handspikes and the slope of the hill to assist them, the company had rolled it into place.
Jack took out his watch and observed the time carefully.
"Three o'clock was the time agreed upon with the railroad people for having everything clear down there in the valley," he said, "but according to railroad usage we'll allow five minutes for variation of watches."
When the time was fully up the boys at the forward end of the great timber withdrew the handspikes with which they had been holding it securely in place. At the same time those at the rear end of it gave it a push with their handspikes. The log slid slowly into the chute, then with a grinding noise slipped rapidly through it, gave a great leap, and went careering down the precipitous hill, making a noise as of thunder.
Tom, with the Doctor's rifle over his shoulder—for he was acting as sentinel—had come to observe this splendid beginning of their winter's work. As the great timber bounded down the hill, and an echo of its final fall came back to announce its arrival at its destination, Tom quietly remarked:
"There may have been a distillery in the path of that log yesterday, but I wouldn't give much for the remains of it now."
"No," said Jack, "but there's money in that stick of wood. We must send down as many such as we can, and what remains of the tree from which I cut it will make many railroad ties and a lot of cordwood."
Then Jack examined the chute to see what effect the passage of the great timber had produced upon it. He found that pretty nearly all the bark had been stripped off the poles of which the chute was made. That was an advantage, inasmuch as it rendered the chute smoother for the passage of lighter timbers, which would presently render its surfaces glass-like in their polish. On the other hand the great timber in its passage had done no harm of any kind to the structure.
"That's a tribute, Jack," said Ed, "to your skill and the Doctor's, as engineers. For if that great stick didn't break any of your poles or twist any of the posts on which they rest, nothing else that we shall send down the hill will. I call it good construction, when a chute made of such stuff as you have used, carries such a weight as that without giving way anywhere."