The thing which Pant had launched against the black shadow was a log boom. It was in this very boom that he hoped later to carry his 50,000 feet of mahogany down the river to the sea. Now he had set it to an unusual task. A log boom consists of a hundred or more logs, ten inches in diameter and twelve to twenty feet long, joined at the ends by steel chains until the whole affair is several hundred feet in length.
So dark was the night that the crew of the pit-pan did not see the approaching string of logs until it was right upon them.
Of the five men on board, two, by the sudden compact, were thrown into the river. It was with the utmost difficulty that the remaining three were able to prevent their unwieldy craft from capsizing. In the end it swung about until it lay full length against the log boom which, tugged at by the current, was rapidly swinging toward the Mexican shore, where waited ten officers of the law.
After giving way to wild burst of anger, the men began tumbling chests of goods into the river.
Before this task was half completed, they were interrupted by the occupants of a dugout, who, swinging alongside, commanded them in the name of the law to desist.
Pant was now sure that he had not been mistaken in the mission of the black shadow.
“If they were on some lawful business why should they pitch their goods into the river?” he asked himself.
“Yes, we have them now. We are giving Daego some of the trouble he so richly deserves. This night’s work will do much for Quintanaroo. But what won’t Daego do to us!” he said, wrinkling his brow as he pushed his dory from its place of hiding. “He knows well enough whose log boom that is. There is not another on the river save his own.”
For some time as he drove his dory across the stream toward the spot where his boom was fastened, the boy reflected upon the cost of doing the right thing, the thing that in the end would result in the most good to the greatest number. Surely one does not engage in the battle for right without placing himself in a place of great peril.
“Ah, well!” he exclaimed, strong-hearted at last, “as someone has said, one may trust God for the outcome. The only question we need to ask, moment by moment, is: ‘This thing I do, is it right?’”