"And now to work," said Binks with the imbecile cheerfulness of his kind. "We'll cut this old rascal into handy lengths in a couple of hours or so, and then the carter will come along with the team, and we'll ride home on the load—just like one of those old pictures of forest-life, you I know."
But we were in no mood to enthuse. Slowly and sadly we pulled off our Norfolk jacket and folded it neatly. We turned a wistful and lingering regard on the landscape; and then we betook us dismally to our toil. We were helpless in the grip of Bink's will, a regular slave of the lamp.
That afternoon will remain a nightmare for years to come. Whenever after this we go into gilded dens of folly and eat lobster à la Newburg, whenever we commit indiscretions with mince-pie or home-made whiskey, we know the form our penitential dreams will take. We will see ourself standing at one end of that awful saw with Binks at the other, and we will go on forever and ever shoving the saw away from us and pulling it back again through a cast-iron log with Bessemer-steel knots, which will shriek in agony at every stroke. And Binks will be wearing a red suit of tights and a pair of cute little horns and a spiked tail.
It was a terrible experience. What Binks said about bringing our back muscles into play was perfectly true. We brought them into play with a vengeance. We brought into play muscles that we never dreamed of possessing. But we didn't like the way they played. There was something very rough about it.
The shades of night fell softly upon us, and still we sawed. The hoot-owls hooted at us in derision, but still that fiendish saw rasped on. In the beginning we had suggested rest a few times, but Binks merely assured us that once we got our second wind we would be all right.
We got our second wind, but it wasn't long before we used it up. Then we called out our third line of reserves, our pulmonary landsturm, so to speak, and we exhausted that, too. By the time we finally quit we were using only the extreme upper lobe of each lung, and all we could do was to gasp and hang on to the handle of the saw lest the thing should leap at us and sink its teeth in our jugular.
Finally Binks stopped. We had cut through the last knot of the last limb of the last length of that interminable trunk—by this time it seemed seven miles long. Binks stopped, and we fell in our tracks. We dropped where we stood, right there in the saw-dust.
"Tell you what," said Binks mopping his brow—we could barely see him in the darkness—"tell you what, there is nothing like this fine, simple, open-air life to make a fellow feel like a king."
The creature was inexorable. His remark was a gratuitous insult; but we were beyond the desire or even the possibility of reply. We could only lie there on our back and look up longingly at the stars, and think how mother used to steal in and kiss us in our little white cot, and how horrified Binks would be when he discovered that we were dying.
"Great Jumping Jee-hosophat!" shouted Binks a moment later. He had struck a match and looked at his watch. "It's a quarter to eight, and we were to have been back at dinner at seven. And that damn carter hasn't come yet!"