" At last he felt
hard planks beneath his feet, and, shaking his head with an effort,
he made out the pilot-house of the SPRITE and a hollow-eyed man
leaning against it. "They've opened the channel, Marsh," he
repeated. "I guess that'll be all." Then quite slowly he sank to
the deck, sound asleep.
Welton, returning from his labours with the iron bridge and the jam,
found them thus. Men slept on the deck of the tug, aboard the pile-
driver. Two or three had even curled up in the crevices of the jam,
resting in the arms of the monster they had subdued.
XLII
When Newmark left, in the early stages of the jam, he gave scant
thought to the errand on which he had ostensibly departed. Whether
or nor Orde got a supply of piles was to him a matter of
indifference. His hope, or rather preference was that the jam
should go out; but he saw clearly what Orde, blinded by the swift
action of the struggle, was as yet unable to perceive. Even should
the riverman succeed in stopping the jam, the extraordinary expenses
incidental to the defence and to the subsequent salvaging,
untangling and sorting would more than eat up the profits of the
drive. Orde would then be forced to ask for an extension of time on
his notes.
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