* * * Then all at once down by the face something crashed, the entire stream became alive.

It hissed and roared, it shrieked, groaned, and grumbled.

At first slowly, then more rapidly, the very fore-front of the center melted inward and forward and downward, until it caught the fierce rush of the freshet and shot out from under the jam.

Far up-stream, bristling and formidable, the tons of logs, grinding savagely together, swept forward.

* * * Then in a manner wonderful to behold, thru the smother of foam and spray, thru the crash and yell of timbers, protesting the flood's hurrying, thru the leap of destruction, the drivers zigzagged calmly and surely to the shore.
Sometimes cables have to be stretched across the chasm, and special rigging devised to let the men down to their dangerous task and more especially to save them from danger when the crash comes.
[Illustration: Fig.20.