A roar of water, momently increasing,
marked the slow rise of the barrier. A very imaginative man might
then have made out a tendency forward on the part of those timbers
floating nearest the centre of the pond. It was a very sluggish
tendency, however, and the men watching critically shook their
heads.
Four more had by this time joined the two men who had raised the
gate, and all together, armed with long pike poles, walked out on
the funnel-shaped booms that should concentrate the logs into the
chute. Here they prodded forward the few timbers within reach, and
waited for more.
These were a long time coming. Members of the driving crew leaped
shouting from one log to another. Sometimes, when the space across
was too wide to jump, they propelled a log over either by rolling
it, paddling it, or projecting it by the shock of a leap on one end.
In accomplishing these feats of tight-rope balance, they stood
upright and graceful, quite unconscious of themselves, their bodies
accustomed by long habit to nice and instant obedience to the almost
unconscious impulses of the brain. Only their eyes, intent,
preoccupied, blazed out by sheer will-power the unstable path their
owners should follow.
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