He caught at Percy Rapson's sleeve to draw him from the sight. But Percy stood firm with his eyes staring wildly at Sergeant Silk.
"Silk! Silk! Come back!" the boy shouted. "You can't do it!"
Whether he heard or not, Silk did not heed the cry. He had thrown off his hat and belt and had plunged into the narrowing stretch of water. With a swift, strong side stroke he was swimming out to the man's rescue.
Narrower and narrower grew the stretch of broken water between the closing walls of giant logs; but quicker still did the space lessen between the swimming red-coated policeman and the man he sought to rescue from a certain terrible death.
When he reached him at last the voices of the river men broke into a cheer.
But Percy Rapson was too agitated to open his lips. With his body bent forward and his eyes staring wide, he watched and watched.
He saw Sergeant Silk catch hold of the man's right leg and raise it upward out of the water, flinging it over the thick, floating log, then push him bodily upward until he lay flat along the spar. Leaving him so, Silk then worked his way hand over hand to the log's far end, and hoisted himself upon it as he might have mounted his horse.
Already the oncoming stack of timber, driving the waves in front of it, was forcing the log forward, and the gap was hardly more than a score of feet in width.
The watchers held their breath, anticipating the moment of contact when the colliding walls should topple over and the two men be caught and crushed out of existence.