Tom glanced up as a sailor looks aloft.
"She'll do, Hank," he said.
The two then with a dozen half clips of the ax, removed the inequalities of the bark from the saw's path.

The long, flexible ribbon of steel began to sing, bending so adaptably to the hands and motions of the men manipulating, that it did not seem possible so mobile an instrument could cut the rough pine.

In a moment the song changed timbre.

Without a word the men straightened their backs.

Tom flirted along the blade a thin stream of kerosene oil from a bottle in his hip pocket, and the sawyers again bent to their work, swaying back and forth rhythmically, their muscles rippling under the texture of their woolens like those of a panther under its skin.