“All right, now. Let heem go bust,” Jean shouted, as the last of the men jumped to the shore.
Immediately Jack pressed the button while they all held their breath. A heavy explosion followed and a mass of water was thrown in the air. For an instant there seemed to be no movement of the logs and Jack was about to voice his disappointment, when suddenly a shudder seemed to shake the jam and, with a rending sound, the foremost logs began slowly to writhe.
“Hurrah! She go bust!” Jean shouted, jumping up and down in his excitement.
“Bust is right,” Mr. Golden agreed; then turning to Jack, he declared:
“My hat off to you, son. You’re the champion key log finder of the outfit.”
“And I’ll take back all I said,” Bob declared, giving his brother a hearty slap on his back. “You’re it, all right.”
By this time Jean and his men were out in the middle of the river working like mad as the whole mass of logs, now in motion, was moving with the current. There was great danger that another log might catch on the rock and another jam form at any minute.
“We ought to have thirty or forty men here now,” Mr. Golden told Rex, as he watched the movement of the logs. “Still they may be able to handle them. You see,” he explained, “if once the head, that is the part where the logs are piled up, gets past that rock, there is not much danger of any of the others catching, as the rock is too far beneath the surface to bother where there is only one layer of logs.”
Several minutes passed and it seemed that the danger was nearly over when suddenly, without warning, the movement of the head stopped.
“They’ve caught again,” Bob gasped.