“Guess you'd better rout out the boss,” screamed Solly to Wallace Carpenter; “this damn water's comin' up an inch an hour right along. When she backs up once, she'll push this jam out sure.”
Wallace ran to the boarding house and roused his partner from a heavy sleep. The latter understood the situation at a word. While dressing, he explained to the younger man wherein lay the danger.
“If the jam breaks once,” said he, “nothing top of earth can prevent it from going out into the Lake, and there it'll scatter, Heaven knows where. Once scattered, it is practically a total loss. The salvage wouldn't pay the price of the lumber.”
They felt blindly through the rain in the direction of the lights on the tug and pile-driver. Shearer, the water dripping from his flaxen mustache, joined them like a shadow.
“I heard you come in,” he explained to Carpenter. At the river he announced his opinion. “We can hold her all right,” he assured them. “It'll take a few more piles, but by morning the storm'll be over, and she'll begin to go down again.”
The three picked their way over the creaking, swaying timber. But when they reached the pile-driver, they found trouble afoot. The crew had mutinied, and refused longer to drive piles under the face of the jam.
“If she breaks loose, she's going to bury us,” said they.
“She won't break,” snapped Shearer, “get to work.”
“It's dangerous,” they objected sullenly.
“By God, you get off this driver,” shouted Solly. “Go over and lie down in a ten-acre lot, and see if you feel safe there!”