The opening of the portal admitted a roar of sound. The freshet was abroad forceful with the strength of a whole winter's accumulated energy. The men heard it and their eyes brightened with the lust of battle. They cheered.

Already the ice cementing the logs together had begun to weaken. The ice had wrenched and tugged savagely at the locked timbers until they had, with a mighty effort, snapped asunder the bonds of their hibernation. Now a narrow lane of black rushing water pierced the rollways, to boil and eddy in the consequent jam three miles below.

At the bank of the river, Thorpe, the manager, rapidly issued his directions. The affair had been all prearranged. To the foremen he assigned their tasks, calling them to him one by one, as a general calls his aids.

"Moloney," said he to a big Irishman, "take your crew and break that jam. Then scatter your men down to within a mile of the pond, and see that the river runs clear. Kerlie, your crew can break rollways with the rest until we get the river fairly filled, and then you can move on down-stream as fast as you are needed. Scotty, you will have the rear."

At once the signal was given to Ellis, the dam watcher. Ellis and his assistants thereupon began to pry with long iron bars at the ratchets of the heavy gates. The chore-boy bent attentively over the ratchetpin, lifting it delicately to permit another inch of raise, dropping it accurately to enable the men at the bars to seize a fresh purchase. The river's roar deepened. Through the wide sluiceways a torrent foamed and tumbled. Immediately it spread through the brush on either side to the limits of the freshet banks, and then gathered for its leap against the uneasy rollways.

Along the edge of the dark channel the face of the logs seemed to crumble away. Farther in towards the banks where the weight of the timber still outbalanced the weight of the flood, the tiers grumbled and stirred, restless with the stream's calling. Far down the river, where Bryan Moloney and his crew were picking at the jam, the water in eager streamlets sought the interstices between the logs, gurgling excitedly like a mountain brook. The jam creaked and groaned in response to the pressure. From its face a hundred jets of water spurted

into the lower stream. Logs up-ended here and there, rising slowly, like so many arms from the lower depths.

The crew worked desperately. Down in the heap somewhere, two logs were crossed in such a manner as to lock the whole. They sought those logs. Thirty feet above the bed of the river six men clamped their peaveys into the soft pine; jerking, pulling, sliding the great logs from their places. Thirty feet below, under the threatening face, six other men coolly picked out and set adrift, one by one, the timbers not inextricably imbedded. From time to time the mass creaked, settled, perhaps even moved a foot or two; but always the practiced rivermen, after a glance, bent more eagerly to their work.

Outlined against the sky, big Bryan Moloney stood directing his work. He knew by the tenseness of the log he stood on that, behind the jam, power had gathered sufficient to push the whole tangle down-stream. Now he was offering it the chance. Suddenly the six men below the jam scattered. Four of them, holding their peaveys across their bodies, jumped lightly from one floating log to another in the zigzag to shore. The other two ran the length of their footing, and, overleaping an open of water, landed heavily and firmly on the very ends of two small floating logs. In this manner the force of the jump rushed the little timbers end-on through the water. The two men were thus ferried to within leaping distance of the other shore.

In the meantime a barely perceptible motion was communicating itself from one particle to another through the centre of the jam. The crew redoubled its exertions, clamping its peaveys here and there, apparently at random, but in reality with the most definite of purposes. A sharp crack exploded immediately underneath. There could no longer exist any doubt as to the motion, although it was as yet sluggish, glacial. The jam crew were forced continually to alter their positions, riding the changing timbers bent-kneed, as a circus rider treads his four galloping horses.

Then all at once something crashed. The entire stream became alive. It hissed and roared, it shrieked, groaned and grumbled. At first slowly, then more rapidly, the very forefront 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.

The six men and Bryan Moloney—who, it will be remembered, were on top of the jam-worked until the last moment. When the logs began to cave under them so rapidly that even the expert rivermen found difficulty in "staying on top," the foreman set the example of hunting safety.

"She pulls, boys," he yelled.

Then in a manner wonderful to behold, through the smother of foam and spray, the drivers zigzagged calmly and surely to the shore.

All but Jimmy Powers. He poised tense and eager on the crumbling face of the jam. Almost immediately he saw what he wanted, and without pause sprang boldly and confidently ten feet straight downward, to alight with accuracy on a single log floating free in the current. And then in the very glory and chaos of the jam itself he was swept downstream.

After a moment the constant acceleration in speed checked, then commenced perceptibly to slacken. At once the rest of the crew began to ride down-stream. Each struck the calks of his river boots strongly into a log, and on such unstable vehicles floated miles with the current. From time to time, as Bryan Moloney indicated, one of them went ashore. There, usually at a bend in the stream where the likelihood of jamming was great, they took their stands. When necessary, they ran out over the face of the river to separate a congestion likely to cause trouble.

At noon they ate from the little canvas bags which had been filled that morning by the cookee. At sunset they rode other logs down the river to where their camp had been made for them. There they ate hugely, hung their ice-wet garments over a tall framework constructed around a monster fire, and turned in on hemlock branches.

All night long the logs slipped down the moonlit current, silently, swiftly, yet without haste. From the whole length of the river rang the hollow boom, boom, boom, of timbers striking one against the other. The drive was on.

1

WHEN TULIPS BLOOM 1

BY HENRY VAN DYKE

I

When tulips bloom in Union Square,
And timid breaths of vernal air

Go wandering down the dusty town,
Like children lost in Vanity Fair;

When every long unlovely row
Of westward houses stands aglow,

And leads the eyes to sunset skies
Beyond the hills where green trees grow;
Then weary seems the street parade,
And weary books, and weary trade:
I'm only wishing to go a-fishing;
For this the month of May was made.

II

I guess the pussy-willows now
Are creeping out on every bough

Along the brook; and robins look
For early worms behind the plough.
The thistle-birds have changed their dun,
For yellow coats to match the sun;
And in the same array of flame
The Dandelion Show's begun.

The flocks of young anemones
Are dancing round the budding trees:
Who can help wishing to go a-fishing
In days as full of joy as these?

III

I think the meadow lark's clear sound

Leaks upward slowly from the ground,

Reprinted by special arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons.

While on the wing the blue-birds ring
Their wedding bells to woods around.

The flirting chewink calls his dear
Behind the bush; and very near,

Where water flows, where green grass grows Song-sparrows gently sing "Good cheer."

And, best of all, through twilight's calm
The hermit-thrush repeats his psalm.

How much I'm wishing to go a-fishing
In days so sweet with music's balm!

IV

'Tis not a proud desire of mine;

I ask for nothing superfine;

No heavy weight, no salmon great,

To break the record, or my line.

Only an idle little stream,

Whose amber waters softly gleam,

Where I may wade, through woodland shade,

And cast the fly, and loaf, and dream:

Only a trout or two, to dart

From foaming pools, and try my art:

'Tis all I'm wishing-old fashioned fishing,

And just a day on Nature's heart.

MAY FLOWERS1

From THE JOY O' LIFE. BY THEODOSIA GARRISON

May flowers on the city street

A keen-faced vender sells, with eyes

Fitted for coarser merchandise

Than these pathetic bits of sweet

That breathe of vague simplicities.

1 Reprinted by permission of Mitchell Kennerley.