Stories by American Authors, Volume 10

by Various

There were seven and a-half million feet of lumber in Villate’s drive that spring. Every stick of it went into the great jam above the glut-hole. The rough fortunes of youth made me an eye-witness of the scene. A wilder spectacle I never saw throughout the lumbering region during a space of eight years. The gates of the dams at the foot of all the lakes were up; the volume of water was immense. Rocks, which in summer stand twenty feet out of the rapids, were now under water. The torrent came pouring down the long incline, black and swift as an arrow, and went over into the pool at one thunderous plunge, throwing up a vast column of mist. Two ledges only, situated in the very throat of the “pitch,” showed above water. These rocks the lumbering company had designed to blast out the previous autumn, but had been prevented by heavy rains. They then stood twenty-seven feet out of water. Now their crests are barely exposed, and the flood washes over them in its mighty rhythm-motion. In the rapids the whole stream is compressed to a width of a little more than seventy yards.

A light jam had formed that morning at a place the drivers called a tournant d’eau, about a mile above. This was broken by getting a haul on it from the shore with a dog-warp. Thereby several thousand logs were liberated at once, and went down together into the rapids. The older drivers exclaimed that it would make mischief when it started; but nothing could be done; it broke and went out with a rush. We, who were ahead, ran on down the ledges to see it go through the falls, and we had to run fast to keep up. The instant the logs entered the rapids they left us behind. We could see them going down, however, end over end, and hear them “boom” against the sunken rocks. Turtlotte and a Welshman named Finfrock were ahead. I heard Turtlotte call out in French that the logs were jamming, and saw the butt ends of great sticks fly up, glittering, out of the water. The logs had struck and hung on one of the centre rocks, and on the shelving ledges upon the east side. The ends of three large sticks, three or four feet across, stood out fifteen feet or more. We ran on, clambering from crag to crag, till we came to a point looking down on the glut, sixty feet beneath; and that was about near enough, for the ends of the logs flew up almost on a level with our eyes, as they went over, and the spray drenched our faces. The ledges under our feet trembled as if an earthquake were shaking them, and not a word could be heard, even when shouted in the ear. The combined noises were louder than thunder, heavier, deeper. It was a warm forenoon, and the sun shone into the rock dazzlingly bright, making a vivid rainbow. It was the hottest, maddest chasm that can well be imagined; and to see that brilliant rainbow hanging there so still and motionless amidst all that uproar, gave one a queer sensation.

Old man Villate himself, with his red cap over his ears, came puffing down, shouting at the top of his lungs. We could see his lips fly. The hitch was betwixt the shelving ledges on the east side and one of the mid-channel rocks. It was not one log that had caught, else the weight of the water would have broken it out. It appeared that two large sticks had come down with the ends lying across each other, and a third log, perhaps several logs, overlying these. When the current sucked them through the rapid, between the centre rock and the shore ledges, the outward ends of the crossed logs struck on both sides. Instantly the current and the momentum of the overlying logs thrust the submerged ends of the cross among the rocks on the bottom of the channel, and the momentarily increasing weight of logs held them there—this at least was the theory at the time. When first we got down there, however, there were more than a thousand logs in the glut; and the ends stood up like a porcupine’s quills, at every conceivable angle. The obstructing logs in the throat of the fall bore the pressure rather lengthwise than across the fibre. These sticks were of yellow spruce, fifty feet long, and fully three feet through. Such logs, when green, will bear an enormous strain. From the way the exposed ends sprang we knew they were buckling like steel rods, yet they held pertinaciously.

The river above was covered with logs. Scores came shooting down every minute, striking into the jam like arrows. The most of these stuck in it. Some few went clean over it, or through it, for the first ten minutes, into the hole below. Logs would glance from the slippery black rocks and go a hundred feet clear of the water, such was the strength of the rapid. I saw sticks of free pine—where they struck the rocks one half on—go in halves from end to end like split-beans—logs forty and fifty feet long; yet the owners never cease to wonder how the lumber gets so badly “broomed up;” for the ends of the logs resemble nothing so much as a paint-brush.

The warps were brought, and Villate called for volunteers to go down, or rather be let down, the ledges and prize off the shore ends of the jammed logs with “peevies.” There were plenty of bold fellows; but every man hesitated. Murmurs of “certaine mort,” “sur mort,” “porte du tombeau,” “porte d’enfer,” arose and were repeated.

“It’s a hard world, but I wants to tarry in it a spell longer, boss!” said one grizzled old Yankee from the Maine rivers, with a sage shake of his long head. We all knew that when the jam started it would go through like an avalanche. Whoever was down there would have to go with it—into the glut-hole.

In an hour the jam had grown enormously. For a hundred rods up the rapid the channel was full of lumber, “churning” and battering itself. The mass had swayed off to the west bank and was piling up against the ledges on the opposite side. The mighty pressure of the torrent kept rolling the logs, one over the other, till the top of the pile was in places thirty or forty feet out of the water. The bottom logs were wedged into the bed of the stream. The flood, thus dammed and held back, rose higher and higher, rushing through and among the mass with a strange hollow roar which changed the note of the fall. Where it hung in the throat of the pitch, the mass kept rising and falling with the peculiar rhythmic motion of the water. We expected each moment to see it break out and go down; but the tough spruce logs held.

By noon, all the crew had come up. The jam filled the whole river for a third of a mile back from the fall, so completely that during the afternoon the west bank gangs crossed on it to the east side. We lighted our fires on the ledges; and as the evening advanced it was a picturesque sight—a hundred and fifty red-shirted drivers camping there and sitting in messes about their coarse fare.

All the next day we worked with the warps. Nooses were dropped over the upright ends of the logs at the foot of the jam, and the whole gang was set to pull on them. Later in the day, a heavy capstan was rigged. The hawsers broke like twine. It was impossible to start a log, so tremendous was the weight of water and lumber combined.