"Good God!" cried the men.
"What did I say?"
"I ought never to have let him go!"
The timber crashed and the water roared, the great logs rose and fell and tumbled one over another. Dark shadows hurried aimlessly hither and thither on the banks.
"Downstream, lads, down!" cried the foreman.
"Ready to give a hand if he's carried inshore. Out with the boat, quick!"
Shadows hurrying downstream….
"He's up again!" came a sudden shout from the farther shore. All stopped.
And true enough, the daring lumberman was up again, hopping like a bird from one racing log to another as they thrust and elbowed their way down the rapids, rising and falling as in a loom. Then he settled to the practised lumberman's easy poise on a log, and steered his way, with lifted pole and carefully balanced body, out of the rapids.
"Well done, well done!"