The Song of the Blood-Red Flower | Page 9

at such a time--a man drawn down by an invisible grasp, to rise no more, a widow wringing her hands and wailing, fatherless children crying and sobbing. Some there are who have seen the marks of the water-spirits on a drowned man's body, or maybe seen the thing itself rise up at midnight, furrowing the water with a gleam of light where it moves. Whose turn next? None can say, but the danger is never far off.
The little camp-fire flickered, the roar of the rapids grew fainter. The moon sits listening to the legends of the river, and gazing down into the water.
Suddenly a great shout is heard from below. The men start up.
"Lock in, lock in! Close the boom!" comes the cry.
A murmur of relief from the men. Wakened abruptly from the spell of the hour, they had taken the hail at first for a cry of distress. They race up, lifting their poles above their heads as a sign the fairway is blocked, and the word of command, "Lock in, lock in!" is flung from man to man along the bank.
"Lock in it is!" cries the man at the head, and runs from the camp-fire down to the waterside. The rope is slipped, the end of the boom hauled close up to the shore and made fast again.
"'Twill hold a bit," says one. "But like to be a long spell for us all--for there's none'll care to get far out on the block to-night, if it lasts. Let's go down and see."
The party made their way down the path by the edge of the bank.
As the last of the timber comes down, the guards by the rapids join them, one after another. "Where'll it be?"
"Down below somewhere, must be. If only it's not the Whirlstone again."
"Ay, if it's that.... 'Tis no light work to get loose there in the daytime, let alone by night."
The Whirlstone Rock it was; the baulks had gathered about it in an inextricable mass. The shores were dark with men gathered to watch.
"Ay, 'tis there, sure enough, and fast as nails," said the men coming in to the shore, after a vain attempt at breaking loose the block.
The Whirlstone was a point of rock, rising barely a yard above the surface of the water, at the lower end of the rapids, where the river began to widen out and clear. It lay rather to the right of the fairway, and the timber floated clear, for the most part, to the left of it. But a long stem bringing up against it broadside on would be checked, and others packing against it form a fan-shaped mass reaching from bank to bank. And it was a dangerous business to try and break it, for the point of contact was at the rock itself out in the river, and there was no time to reach the bank once the timber started to spread. The usual way was to get out a boat from below, and even then, it was a race for life to get clear before the loosened mass came roaring down.
The foreman swore aloud. "I'll have that cursed rock out of the fairway next summer, if I have to splinter it. Well, there's nothing for it now; get your coffee, lads, and wait till it's light."
"Let's have a look at it first," cried a young, brisk voice in the crowd. "Maybe we could get it clear."
"There's no clearing that in the dark," said the foreman. "Try, if you like."
The young man sprang out on to the nearest point of the block, and leaped across actively, with lifted pole, to the middle. Reaching there, he bent down to see how the jam was fixed.
"Hallo!" came a hail from the rock. "It's easy enough. There's just one stick here holding it up--a cut of the axe'll clear it."
"Ho!" cried the men ashore. "And who's to cut it loose, out there in the dark and all?"
"Get a rope and haul it clear!" shouted the foreman.
"No use--can't be done that way."
The young man came ashore. "Mind if I lose the axe?" he asked the foreman.
"Lose a dozen and welcome, if you can get it clear. Better than losing two hours' work for fifteen men."
"Right. Give me an axe, somebody."
"'Tis fooling with death," cried one in the crowd. "Don't let him go."
"How d'you reckon to get back?" asked the foreman.
"Upstream at first, and come down after, when it clears."
"'Tis a mad trick," muttered the men.
"I'm not telling him to go, but I won't forbid him," said the foreman, with emphasis. "And if 'twas any other man I'd not let him try, but when Olof says he'll do a thing it's safe enough to be done. Sure you can do it, lad?"
"Sure as can be. Where's the axe?"
He took the axe,