Chapter 23

A dozen more of Orde's personal following volunteered. At once his good humour returned; and his easy leisurely confidence in himself.

“We've got to close that opening, first thing,” said he. “Marsh, tow the pile-driver up there.”

He caused a heavy line to be run from a tree, situated around the bend down stream, to the stern of the driver.

“Now if you have to,” he told North, who had charge, “let go all holds, and the line will probably swing you around out of danger. We on the tug will get out as best we can.”

The opening was to be closed by piles driven in groups of sixteen bound together by chains. The clumps were connected one to the other by a system of boom logs and ropes to interpose a continuous barrier. The pile-driver placed the clumps; while the tug attended to the connecting defences.

“Now, boys,” said Orde as his last word, “if she starts to go, save yourselves the best way you can. Never mind the driver. STAY ON TOP!”

Slowly the tug and her consort nosed up through the boiling water.

“She's rising already,” said Orde to Marsh, watching the water around the piles.

“Yes, and that jam's going out before many minutes,” supplemented the tugboat captain grimly.

Both these statements were only too true. Although not fifteen minutes before, the jam had lain locked in perfect safety, now the slight rise of the waters had lifted and loosened the mass until it rose fairly on the quiver.

“Work fast!” Orde called to the men on the pile-driver. “If we can close the opening before those Redding logs hit us, we may be able to turn them into our new channel.”

He did not add that if the opening were not closed before the jam broke, as break it would in a very few moments, the probabilities were that both pile-driver and tug would be destroyed. Every man knew that already.

Tom North ordered a pile placed in the carriage; the hammer descended. At once, like battering rams logs began to shoot up from the depths of the river end foremost all about them. These timbers were projected with tremendous force, leaping sometimes half their length above the surface of the water. If any of them had hit either the tug or the pile-driver squarely, it would have stove and sunk the craft. Fortunately this did not happen; but Marsh hastily towed the scow back to a better position. The pile had evidently been driven into the foot of the jam itself, thus loosening timbers lying at the bottom of the river.

The work went forward as rapidly as possible. Four times the jam shrugged and settled; but four times it paused on the brink of discharge. Three of the clumps had been placed and bound; and fifteen piles of the last clump had been driven.

“One more pile!” breathed Orde, his breath quickening a trifle as he glanced up stream.

The hammer in the high derrick ran smoothly to the top, paused, and fell. A half dozen times more it ripped. Then without delay the heavy chains were thrown around the winch, and the steam power began to draw the clumps together.

“Done!” cried Tom North, straightening his back.

“And a job in time, too,” said Johnny Sims, indicating the creaking and tottering jam.

North unmoored, and the driver dropped back with the current and around the bend where she was snubbed by the safety line already mentioned.

Immediately the tug churned forward to accomplish the last duty, that of binding the defences together by means of chains and cables. Two men leaped to the floating booms and moved her fore and aft. Orde and the Rough Red set about the task. Methodically they worked from either end toward the middle. When they met finally, Orde directed his assistant to get aboard the tug.

“I'll tie this one, Jimmy,” said he.

Aboard the tug all was tense preparation. Marsh grasped alertly the spokes of the wheel. In the engine-room Harvey, his hand on the throttle, stood ready to throw her wide open at the signal. Armed with sharp axes two men prepared to cut the mooring lines on a sign from the Rough Red. They watched his upraised hand. When it should descend, their axes must fall.

“Look out,” the Rough Red warned Orde, who was methodically tying the last cumbersome knot, “she's getting ready!”

Orde folded the knot over without reply. Up stream the jam creaked, groaned, settled deliberately forward, cutting a clump of piles like straw.

“She's coming!” cried the Rough Red.

“Give me every second you can,” said Orde, without looking up. He was just making the last turns.

The mass toppled slowly, fell into the swift current, and leaped with a roar. The Rough Red watched with cat-like attention.

“Jump!” he cried at last, and his right arm descended.

With the shout and the motion several things happened simultaneously. Orde leaped blindly for the rail, where he was seized and dragged aboard by the Rough Red; the axes fell, Marsh whirled over the wheel, Harvey threw open his throttle. The tug sprang from its leash like a hound. And behind the barrier the logs, tossing and tumbling, the white spray flying before their onslaught, beat in vain against the barrier, like raging wild beasts whose prey has escaped.

“Close call,” said Orde briefly.

“Bet you,” replied Marsh.

Neither referred to the tug's escape; but to the fortunate closing of the opening.

XLI

Orde now took steps to deflect into the channel recently dredged to Stearn's Bayou the mass of the logs racing down stream from Redding. He estimated that he had still two hours or so in which to do the work. In this time he succeeded by the severest efforts in establishing a rough shunt into the new channel. The logs would come down running free. Only the shock of their impact against the tail of the jam already formed was to be feared. Orde hoped to be able to turn the bulk of them aside.

This at first he succeeded in doing; and very successfully as affecting the pressure on the jam below. The first logs came scattering. Then in a little while the surface of the river was covered with them; they shouldered each other aside in their eagerness to outstrip the rushing water; finally they crowded down more slowly, hardly able to make their way against the choking of the river banks, but putting forth in the very effort to proceed a tremendous power. To the crew working in the channel dredged through to Steam's Bayou the affair was that of driving a rather narrow and swift stream, only exaggerated. By quick and skilful work they succeeded in keeping the logs in motion. A large proportion of the timbers found their way into the bayou. Those that continued on down the river could hardly have much effect on the jam.

The work was breathless in its speed. From one to another sweat-bathed, panting man the logs were handed on. As yet only the advance of the big jam had arrived at the dredged channel.

Orde looked about him and realised this.

“We can't keep this up when the main body hits us,” he panted to his neighbour, Jim Denning. “We'll have to do some more pile-driver work.”

He made a rapid excursion to the boom camp, whence he returned with thirty or forty of the men who had given up work on the jam below.

“Here, boys,” said he, “you can at least keep these logs moving in this channel for a couple of hours. This isn't dangerous.”

He spoke quite without sarcastic intent; but the rivermen, already over their first panic, looked at each other a trifle shamefacedly.

“I'll tie into her wherever you say,” said one big fellow. “If you fellows are going back to the jam, I'm with you.”

Two or three more volunteered. The remainder said nothing, but in silence took charge of the dredged channel.

Orde and his men now returned to the jam where, on the pile-driver, the tugs, and the booms, they set methodically to strengthening the defences as well as they were able.

“She's holding strong and dandy,” said Orde to Tom North, examining critically the clumps of piles. “That channel helps a lot in more ways than one. It takes an awful lot of water out of the river. As long as those fellows keep the logs moving, I really believe we're all right.”

But shortly the water began to rise again, this time fairly by leaps. In immediate response the jam increased its pressure. For the hundredth time the frail wooden defences opposed to millions of pounds were tested to the very extreme of their endurance. The clumps of piles sagged outward; the network of chains and cables tightened and tightened again, drawing ever nearer the snapping point. Suddenly, almost without warning, the situation had become desperate.

And for the first time Orde completely lost his poise and became fluently profane. He shook his fist against the menacing logs; he apostrophised the river, the high water, the jam, the deserters, Newmark and his illness, ending finally in a general anathema against any and all streams, logs, and floods. Then he stormed away to see if anything had gone wrong at the dredged channel.

“Well,” said Tom North, “they've got the old man real good and mad this time.”

The crew went on driving piles, stringing cables, binding chains, although, now that the inspiration of Orde's combative spirit was withdrawn the labours seemed useless, futile, a mere filling in of the time before the supreme moment when they would be called upon to pay the sacrifice their persistence and loyalty had proffered for the altar of self-respect and the invincibility of the human Soul.

At the dredged channel Orde saw the rivermen standing idle, and, half-blind with anger he burst upon them demanding by this, that and the other what they meant. Then he stopped short and stared.

Square across the dredged channel and completely blocking it lay a single span of an iron bridge. Although twisted and misshapen, it was still intact, the framework of its overhead truss-work retaining its cage-like shape. Behind it the logs had of course piled up in a jam, which, sinking rapidly to the bed of the channel, had dammed back the water.

“Where in hell did that drop from?” cried Orde.

“Come down on top the jam,” explained a riverman. “Must have come way from Redding. We just couldn't SCARE her out of here.”

Orde, suddenly fallen into a cold rage, stared at the obstruction, both fists clenched at his side.

“Too bad, boy,” said Welton at his elbow. “But don't take it too hard. You've done more than any of the rest of us could. And we're all losers together.”

Orde looked at him strangely.

“That about settles it,” repeated Welton.

“Settle!” cried Orde. “I should think not.”

Welton smiled quaintly.

“Don't you know when you're licked?”

“Licked, hell!” said Orde. “We've just begun to fight.”

“What can you do?”

“Get that bridge span out of there, of course.”

“How?”

“Can't we blow her up with powder?”

“Ever try to blow up iron?”

“There must be some way.”

“Oh, there is,” replied Welton. “Of course--take her apart bolt by bolt and nut by nut.”

“Send for the wrenches, then,” snapped Orde.

“But it would take two or three days, even working night and day.”

“What of it?”

“But it would be too late--it would do no good--”

“Perhaps not,” interrupted Orde; “but it will be doing something, anyway. Look here, Welton, are you game? If you'll get that bridge out in two days I'll hold the jam.”

“You can't hold that jam two hours, let alone two days,” said Welton decidedly.

“That's my business. You're wasting time. Will you send for lanterns and wrenches and keep this crew working?”

“I will,” said Welton.

“Then do it.”

During the next two days the old scenes were all relived, with back of them the weight of the struggle that had gone before. The little crew worked as though mad. Excepting them, no one ventured on the river, for to be caught in the imminent break meant to die. Old spars, refuse timbers of all sorts--anything and everything was requisitioned that might help form an obstruction above or below water. Piles were taken where they could be found. Farmer's trees were cut down. Pines belonging to divers and protesting owners were felled and sharpened. Some were brought in by rail. Even the inviolate Government supply was commandeered. The Railroad Company had a fine lot which, with remarkable shortsightedness and lack of public spirit, they refused to sell at any price. The crew took them by force. Once Captain Marsh was found up to his waist in water, himself felling the trees of a wood, and dragging them to the river by a cable attached to the winch of his tug. Night followed day; and day night again. None of the crews realised the fact. The men were caught in the toils of a labour ceaseless and eternal. Never would it end, just as never had it begun. Always were they to handle piles, steam hammers and the implements of their trade, menaced by a jam on the point of breaking, wet by a swollen and angry flood, over-arched by a clear calm sky or by the twinkling peaceful stars. Long since had they ceased to reckon with the results of what they did, the consequences either to themselves or to the jam. Mechanically they performed their labour. Perhaps the logs would kill them. Perhaps these long, black, dripping piles they drove were having some effect on the situation. Neither possibility mattered.

Then all at once, as though a faucet had been turned off, the floods slackened.

“They've opened the channel,” said Orde dully. His voice sounded to himself very far away. Suddenly the external world, too, seemed removed to a distance, far from his centre of consciousness. He felt himself moving in strange and distorted surroundings; he heard himself repeating to each of a number of wavering, gigantic figures the talismanic words that had accomplished the dissolution of the earth for himself: “They've opened the channel.” 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.

On arriving in Monrovia, he drove to his own house. To Mallock he issued orders.

“Go to the office and tell them I am ill,” said he, “and then hunt up Mr. Heinzman, wherever he is, and tell him I want to see him immediately.”

He did not trouble to send word directly to Orde, up river; but left him to be informed by the slow process of filtration through the bookkeepers. The interim of several hours before Heinzman appeared he spent very comfortably in his easy chair, dipping into a small volume of Montaigne.

At length the German was announced. He entered rather red and breathless, obviously surprised to find Newmark at home.

“Dot was a terrible jam,” said he, mopping his brow and sinking into a chair. “I got lots of logs in it.”

Newmark dismissed the subject with an abrupt flip of his unlighted cigar.

“Heinzman,” said he, “in three weeks at the latest Orde will come to you asking for a renewal of the notes you hold against our firm. You must refuse to make such a renewal.”

“All righdt,” agreed Heinzman.

“He'll probably offer you higher interest. You must refuse that. Then when the notes are overdue you must begin suit in foreclosure.”

“All righdt,” repeated Heinzman a little restlessly. “Do you think he vill hold that jam?”

Newmark shrugged his shoulders swiftly.

“I got lots of logs in that jam. If that jam goes out I vill lose a heap of money.”

“Well, you'll make quite a heap on this deal,” said Newmark carelessly.

“Suppose he holds it,” said Heinzman, pausing. “I hate like the mischief to joomp on him.”

“Rot!” said Newmark decisively. “That's what he's there for.” He looked at the German sharply. “I suppose you know just how deep you're in this?”

“Oh, I ain't backing oudt,” negatived Heinzman. “Not a bit.”

“Well, then, you know what to do,” said Newmark, terminating the interview.

XLIII

Little by little the water went down. The pressure, already considerably relieved by the channel into Stearn's Bayou, slackened every hour. Orde, still half dazed with his long-delayed sleep, drove back along the marsh road to town.

His faculties were still in the torpor that follows rest after exhaustion. The warm July sun, the breeze from the Lake, the flash of light from the roadside water, these were all he had room for among his perceptions. He was content to enjoy them, and to anticipate drowsily the keen pleasure of seeing Carroll again. In the rush of the jam he had heard nothing from her. For all he knew she and Bobby might have been among the spectators on the bank; he had hardly once left the river. It did not seem to him strange that Carroll should not have been there to welcome him after the struggle was over. Rarely did she get to the booms in ordinary circumstances. This episode of the big jam was, after all, nothing but part of the day's work to Orde; a crisis, exaggerated it is true, but like many other crises a man must meet and cope with on the river. There was no reason why Carroll should drive the twelve miles between Monrovia and the booms, unless curiosity should take her.

As the team left the marsh road for the county turnpike past the mills and lumberyards, Orde shook himself fully awake. He began to review the situation. As Newmark had accurately foreseen, he came almost immediately to a realisation that the firm would not be able to meet the notes given to Heinzman. Orde had depended on the profits from the season's drive to enable him to make up the necessary amount. Those profits would be greatly diminished, if not wiped out entirely, by the expenses, both regular and irregular, incurred in holding the jam; by the damage suits surely to be brought by the owners of the piles, trees, pile-drivers and other supplies and materials requisitioned in the heat of the campaign; and by the extra labour necessary to break out the jam and to sort the logs according to their various destinations.

“I'll have to get an extension of time,” said Orde to himself. “Of course Joe will let me have more time on my own personal note to the firm. And Heinzman surely ought to--I saved a lot of his logs in that jam. And if he doesn't want to, I guess an offer of a little higher interest will fetch him.”

Ordinarily the state of affairs would have worried him, for it was exactly the situation he had fought against so hard. But now he was too wearied in soul and body. He dismissed the subject from his mind. The horses, left almost to themselves, lapsed into a sleepy jog. After a little they passed the bridge and entered the town. Warm spicy odours of pine disengaged themselves from the broken shingles and sawdust of the roadway, and floated upward through the hot sunshine. The beautiful maples with their dense shadows threw the sidewalks into coolness. Up one street and down another the horses took their accustomed way. Finally they pulled up opposite the Orde house. Orde hitched the horses, and, his step quickening in anticipation, sprang up the walk and into the front door.

“Hullo, sweetheart!” he called cheerily.

The echoes alone answered him. He cried again, and yet again, with a growing feeling of disappointment that Carroll should happen to be from home. Finally a door opened and shut in the back part of the house. A moment later Mary, the Irish servant girl, came through the dining-room, caught sight of Orde, threw her apron over her head, and burst into one of those extravagant demonstrations of grief peculiar to the warm-hearted of her class.

Orde stopped short, a sinking at his heart.

“What is it, Mary?” he asked very quietly.

But the girl only wept the louder, rocking back and forth in a fresh paroxysm of grief. Beside himself with anxiety Orde sprang forward to shake her by the arm, to shower her with questions. These elicited nothing but broken and incoherent fragments concerning “the missus,” “oh, the sad day!” “and me lift all alone with Bobby, me heart that heavy,” and the like, which served merely to increase Orde's bewilderment and anxiety. At this moment Bobby himself appeared from the direction of the kitchen. Orde, frantic with alarm, fell upon his son. Bobby, much bewildered by all this pother, could only mumble something about “smallpox,” and “took mamma away with doctor.”

“Where? where, Bobby?” cried Orde, fairly shaking the small boy by the shoulder. He felt like a man in a bad dream, trying to reach a goal that constantly eluded him.

At this moment a calm, dry voice broke through the turmoil of questions and exclamations. Orde looked up to see the tall, angular form of Doctor McMullen standing in the doorway.

“It's all right,” said the doctor in answer to Orde's agonised expression. “Your wife was exposed to smallpox and is at my house to avoid the danger of spreading contagion. She is not ill.”

Having thus in one swift decisive sentence covered the ground of Orde's anxiety, he turned to the sniffling servant.

“Mary,” said he sternly, “I'm ashamed of you! What kind of an exhibition is this? Go out to the kitchen and cook us some lunch!” He watched her depart with a humourous quirk to his thin lips. “Fool Irish!” he said with a Scotchman's contempt. “I meant to head you off before you got home, but I missed you. Come in and sit down, and I'll tell you about it.”

“You're quite sure Mrs. Orde is well?” insisted Orde.

“Absolutely. Never better. As well as you are.”

“Where was she exposed?”

“Down at Heinzman's. You know--or perhaps you don't--that old Heinzman is the worst sort of anti-vaccination crank. Well, he's reaped the reward.”

“Has he smallpox?” asked Orde. “Why, I thought I remembered seeing him up river only the other day.”

“No; his daughter.”

“Mina?”

“Yes. Lord knows where she got it. But get it she did. Mrs. Orde happened to be with her when she was taken with the fever and distressing symptoms that begin the disease. As a neighbourly deed she remained with the girl. Of course no one could tell it was smallpox at that time. Next day, however, the characteristic rash appeared on the thighs and armpits, and I diagnosed the case.” Dr. McMullen laughed a little bitterly. “Lord, you ought to have seen them run! Servants, neighbours, friends--they all skedaddled, and you couldn't have driven them back with a steam-roller! I telegraphed to Redding for a nurse. Until she came Mrs. Orde stayed by, like a brick. Don't know what I should have done without her. There was nobody to do anything at all. As soon as the nurse came Mrs. Orde gave up her post. I tell you,” cried Doctor McMullen with as near an approach to enthusiasm as he ever permitted himself, “there's a sensible woman! None of your story-book twaddle about nursing through the illness, and all that. When her usefulness was ended, she knew enough to step aside gracefully. There was not much danger as far as she was concerned. I had vaccinated her myself, you know, last year. But she MIGHT take the contagion and she wanted to spare the youngster. Quite right. So I offered her quarters with us for a couple of weeks.”