After they had sawed for a while Jerry cried: "Hey! She's runnin' out again." He accompanied this remark by an abrupt cessation of effort. As a result the saw stopped in its downward course and Tom's chin came into violent contact with the upper handle.
The man above uttered a cry of pain and fury; he clapped a hand to his face as if to catch and save his teeth.
Jerry giggled with a shameless lack of feeling. "Spit 'em out," he cackled. "They ain't no more good to you than a mouthful of popcorn." He was not really amused at his partner's mishap; on the contrary, he was more than a little concerned by it, but fatigue had rendered him absurdly hysterical, and the constant friction of mental, spiritual, and physical contact with Tom had fretted his soul as that sawdust inside his clothes had fretted his body. "He, he! Ho, ho!" he chortled. "You don't shove. Oh no! All the same, whenever I stop pullin' you butt your brains out."
"I didn't shove!" The ferocity of this denial was modified and muffled by reason of the fact that a greater part of the speaker's hand was inside his mouth and his fingers were taking stock of its contents.
"All right, you didn't shove. Have it your own way. I said she was runnin' out again. We ain't cuttin' wedges, we're cuttin' boat-seats."
"Well, why don't you pull straight? I can't follow a line with you skinning the cat on your end."
"My fault again, eh?" Mr. Quirk showed the whites of his eyes and his face grew purple. "Lemme tell you something, Tom. I've studied you, careful, as man and boy, for a matter of thirty years, but I never seen you in all your hideousness till this trip. I got you now, though; I got you all added up and subtracted and I'll tell you the answer. It's my opinion, backed by figgers, that you're a dam'—" He hesitated, then with a herculean effort he managed to gulp the remainder of his sentence. In a changed voice he said: "Oh, what's the use? I s'pose you've got feelin's. Come on, let's get through."
Linton peered down over the edge of the log. "It's your opinion I'm a what?" he inquired, with vicious calmness.
"Nothing. It's no use to tell you. Now then, lift, bite, leg—Why don't you lift?"
"I AM lifting. Leggo your end!" Mr. Linton tugged violently, but the saw came up slowly. It rose and fell several times, but with the same feeling of dead weight attached to it. Tom wiped the sweat out of his eyes and once again in a stormy voice he addressed his partner: "If you don't get off them handles I'll take a stick and knock you off. What you grinnin' at?"