"I'll make 'em sweat, I'll make 'em skip," said Ginger.
That day Quin was much in the Mill, and he was there when the lightning struck Skookum Charlie: when the saws spouted fire. He, too, was glad to get back to labour: to the doing of things. And he loved the Mill, as many did.
It was a great log of spruce that carried death within it. High up above the Saws hung a lamp so that Skookum and his partner could see the cut as well as feel it. The whole Mill squealed and trembled: every machine within it ran full blast: the song of the Mill was great.
"Oh, heave and roll," said the Bull-Wheel. They got the log on the carriage, drove in the dogs and Ginger sent her at the eager saws. He cut the slab off, and then set her for an eight-inch cant and got her half through, when the lightning came.
There was a horrid rip, a grinding, deafening crash and streams of fire came out of the cut log. On top of it was Skookum driving home a wedge. He drove it deep and deeper, and as the crash came, Quin stood where he had stood when Pete went for him. There was another horrid scream as the smashed saw broke and hurled a jagged quadrant upward from the cut.
"Oh, Christ!" said those who saw. At Quin's red feet, a bloody corpse lay, for the saw had sliced Skookum nigh in two, shearing through flesh and bones, ribs and spine. For one moment he was helped to his feet by the thing that cut his life out, and he stood upon the log, with a howl torn out of his very lungs, and then pitched headlong on the floor.
There came screams from the far end of the Mill, for another segment of the saw had flown out straight, and, striking a roller, came up slanting from it, and disembowelled a wretched Chinaman. He stood and squealed lamentably and then looked at himself and lay down and died.
And all the Mill ceased and men came running even from below.
"My God," said Quin.
But Ginger said nothing. Terror had hold of him. He leant against the deadly log and vomited. Every lamp in the Mill was held up in two circles, one about Skookum and the other about the Chinaman. Faces as white as the dead men's looked at the dead.