Salter ventured another expostulation:
"Stay where you are! How are you going to manage, if the boys can't tackle the thing?"
"They haven't as much at stake as I have," was Vane's reply. "I'm a director of the company, as you pointed out. Give me two sticks of giant-powder, some fuse, and detonators!"
Salter yielded when he saw that Vane meant to be obeyed; and cramming the blasting material into his pocket, Vane turned to Carroll.
"Are you coming with me?"
"Since I can't stop you, I suppose I'd better go."
As they sprang down the bank, Salter addressed one of the miners at work near him.
"I've seen a few company bosses in my time, but this one's different from the rest. I can't imagine any of the others wanting to cross that jam."
Vane crawled out on the groaning timber, with Carroll a few feet behind him. The perilous bridge they traversed rolled beneath their feet; but they had joined the other men before they came to any particularly troublesome opening. Then the clustering wet figures were brought up by a gap filled with leaping foam, in the midst of which brushwood swung to and fro and projecting branches ground on one another. Whether there was solid timber a foot or two beneath, or only the entrance to some cavity by which the stream swept through the barrier, there was nothing to show; but Vane set his lips and leaped. He alighted on something that bore him, and when the others followed, floundering and splashing, the deliberation which hitherto had characterized their movements suddenly deserted them. They had reached the limit beyond which it was no longer needful.
There is courage which springs from knowledge, often painfully acquired, of the threatened dangers and the best means of avoiding them; but it carries its possessor only so far. Beyond that point he must face the risk he cannot estimate and blindly trust to chance. At sea, when canvas is still the propelling power, and in the wilderness, man at grips with the elemental forces must now and then rise above bodily shrinking and disregard the warnings of reason. There are tasks which cannot be undertaken in cold blood; and when they had crossed the gap, Vane and those behind him blundered on in hot Berserker fury. They had risen to the demand on them, and the curious psychic change had come; now they must achieve success or face annihilation. But in this there was nothing unusual; it is the alternative offered many a log-driver, miner and sailorman.