“Sure,” said he, “now that’s funny!”
He listened a moment, then passed on. The vagaries of the river were, after all, nothing to him. He belonged on Canal Street, East Side; and Canal Street, East Side, seemed peaceful.
The river had fallen abruptly silent. The last of Jimmy’s flash-boards was in place. Back in the sleeping town the clock in Pierce’s Tower struck two.
Jimmy and his men, having thus raised the level of the dam a good three feet, emerged dripping from the west side canal, and cheerfully took their way northward to where, in the chilly dawn, their comrades were sleeping. As they passed the riffles they paused. A heavy grumbling issued from the logs jammed there, a grumbling brutish and sullen, as though the reluctant animals were beginning to stir. The water had already banked up from the raised dam.
Of course the affair, from a river driver’s standpoint, at once became exceedingly simple. The slumbering twenty were aroused to astounded drowsiness. By three, just as the dawn was beginning to streak the east, the regular clank, clank, click of the peevies proclaimed that due advantage of the high water was being seized. From then until six was a matter of three hours more. A great deal can be accomplished in three hours with flood water. The last little jam “pulled” just about the time the first citizen of the West Side discovered that his cellar was full of water. When that startled freeman opened the front door to see what was up, he uttered a tremendous ejaculation; and so, shortly, came to the construction of a raft.
Well, the newspapers got out extras with scare heads about “Outrages” and “High-Handed Lawlessness”; and factory owners by the canals raised up their voices in bitterness over flooded fire-rooms; and property owners of perishable cellar goods howled of damage suits; and the ordinary citizen took to bailing out the hollow places of his domain. Toward nine o’clock after the first excitement had died and the flash-boards had been indignantly yanked from their illegal places a squad of police went out to hunt up the malefactor. The latter they discovered on a boom pole directing the sluicing. From this position he declined to stir. One fat policeman ventured a toppling yard or so on the floating timber, threw his shaky hands aloft, and with a mighty effort regained the shore, where he sat down panting. To the appeals of the squad to come and be arrested, Jimmy paid not the slightest attention. He puffed periodically on his “meerschaum,” and directed the sluicing. Through the twenty-four-foot gate about a million an hour passed. Thus it came about that a little after noon Jimmy stepped peaceably ashore and delivered himself up.
“You won’t have no more trouble below,” he observed to McGann, his lieutenant, watching reflectively the last log as it shot through the gate. “Just tie right into her and keep her a-hustling.” Then he refilled his pipe, lit it, and approached the expectant squad.
At the station house he was interviewed by reporters. That is, they asked questions. To only one of them did they elicit a reply.
“Didn’t you know you were breaking the law?” inquired the “Eagle” man. “Didn’t you know you’d be arrested?”
“Sure!” replied Jimmy with obvious contempt.