As he disappeared beneath the surface Bill drew a long breath and, opening his eyes, looked upward. A couple of swift strokes and his head emerged where a small patch of light showed an open space.
Reaching out he grasped the rough bark of a log, shook the icy water from his eyes, and reviewed his situation. His first thought was of the bateau, but a shoreward glance revealed only the swiftly gliding trunks of the forest wall with the bateau and the gesticulating crowd but a blur in the distance.
Near him floated smoothly a huge forked trunk from whose prongs protruded the stubs of lopped limbs. Releasing his hold, he swam toward the big log which floated butt foremost among its lesser neighbors, and, diving, came up between the forks and gripped firmly a limb stub.
On every hand thousands of logs floated quietly, seemingly motionless as logs on the bosom of a mill-pond. Only the rushing walls of pine on either side of the narrow river-aisle spoke of the terrific speed of the drive.
Suddenly, as the great forked log swept around a bend, the peril of his situation dawned upon him in all its horror. The dull roar changed to a mighty bellow where the high-tossed white-water leaped high among the submerged rocks of the rapid, and above its thunder sounded the heavy rumble of the shock and grind of thousands of wildly pitching logs.
Only for a moment did he gaze out over the heaving forefront of the drive. His log shot forward with the speed of a bullet as it was seized in the grip of the current; the next moment it leaped clear of the water and plunged blindly into the whirling tossing pandemonium of the white-water gut.
Bill clung desperately to the stub, expecting each moment to be his last. Close in the fork he was protected on either side from the hammering blows of the caroming timber. All about him the air was filled with flying logs which ripped the bark from each other's sides, while the shock and batter of the wild stampede threatened momentarily to tear loose his grip.
It seemed to the desperate man that hours passed as he clung doggedly to the huge trunk which trembled and shivered and plunged wildly at the pounding impact, when suddenly it brought up against a half-submerged rock, stopped dead, grated and jarred at the crash of following logs, poised for an instant, and then slanted into deeper water, while up the man's leg shot a twisting, wrenching pain, sickening—nerve-killing in its intensity.
His grasp relaxed and his whole body went limp and lifeless as the big log overrode the last rock barrier and was caught in the placid, slowly revolving water of a shore eddy.