“She’ll hang over thim twinty days,” he confided to Jimmy. “Shure!”
Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe. McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.
But the little man had been figuring, too, and his arrangements were more elaborate and more nearly complete than McGann suspected. That very morning he sauntered leisurely out over the rear logs, his hands in his pockets. Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voiced comments to one or another of the men. The person addressed first looked extremely astonished, then shouldered his peevie and started for camp, leaving the diminished rear crew a prey to curiosity. Soon the word went about, “Day and night work,” they whispered, though it was a little difficult to see the difference in ultimate effectiveness between a half crew working all the time and a whole crew working half the time.
About this stage Daly began to worry. He took the train to Grand Rapids, anxiety written deep in his brows. When he saw the little inadequate crew pecking in a futile fashion at the logs winged out over the shallows, he swore fervidly and sought Jimmy.
Jimmy appeared calm.
“We’ll get ’em out all right, Mr. Daly,” said he.
“Get ’em out!” growled Daly. “Sure! but when? We ain’t got all summer this season. Those logs have got to hit our booms in fourteen days or they’re no good to us!”
“You’ll have ’em,” assured Jimmy.
Such talk made Daly tired, and he said so.
“Why, it’ll take you a week to get her over those infernal shallows,” he concluded. “You got to get more men, Jimmy.”