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Practise on small, slender logs, chopping them in short lengths until you understand something of the woodsman's art of "logging up a tree"; then and not until then should you attempt to cut heavier wood. If you are sure-footed and absolutely certain that you can stand firmly on the log without teetering or swaying when leaning over, do so.
The whole surface looked sick, with patches of sodden white and sickly lead-colour; and down along the shore it was covered by a lane of shallow, yellowish water. It appeared placid and innocent enough; but the woodsman's practised eye perceived that it might break up, or "go out," at any moment. The bear was at his heels, however, and that particular moment was not the one for indecision.
Then, realizing with a pang that he needed something more than clothes and a rifle, he flung them down on the snow and made a dash for the cabin, in the hope of rescuing a hunk of bacon or a loaf of his substantial woodsman's bread. But before he could reach the door a licking flame shot out and hurled him back, half blinded.
For a moment he stood swaying and then like a great pine beneath the woodsman's ax he crashed to earth. Others of the Kor-ul-lul had rushed to engage the balance of Om-at's party. They could be heard fighting at a short distance and it was evident that the Kor-ul-ja were falling slowly back and as they fell Om-at called to the missing one: "Tarzan the Terrible! Tarzan the Terrible!"
At her sudden approach he had swung his axe in readiness, but his cool eye had read her signals aright. "Good dog!" he said, with cheerful confidence. "We'll lick the varmints!" But the young wolves went wild with rage at this defection and defiance, and rushed in at once. They sprang first upon the bitch; though one, rushing past, leaped venomously at the woodsman's throat.
Now the wanderer emerges upon an open space so full of sunshine that the strawberries are already ripening; near them are stacked the tender young trees, ready for spacing, and the billets of wood piled up and half covered with thistle and burdock leaves; and a little farther away, half hidden by tall weeds, teeming with insects, rises the peaked top of the woodsman's hut.
The frosty air was perfectly still, and through it sounded the barking of dogs, the tinkle of the sheep-bell, the woodsman's axe in the plantations, and now and then the rattle of Dumple's harness, as she shook his head or shifted his feet at the gate where he had been left standing.
Some time in the night he was awakened by a persistent tapping on the door. In the woodsman's manner, he was instantly broad awake. He lit the gas and opened the door to admit Newmark, partially dressed over his night gown. "Orde," said he briefly and without preliminary, "didn't you tell me the other day that rollways were piled both on the banks and IN the river?" "Yes, sometimes," said Orde.
The dark forest-trees gathered curiously about his wavering consciousness to look down on him in aloof compassion. And over him, invisible, palpable, hovered the dreadful north-country cold, waiting to stoop. Regis Brugiere, by the grace of a woodsman's perseverance and the instinct of a wild creature, gained at last the clearing in which his cabin stood.
Had he been standing upright upon the remnant of trunk, he would certainly, in the bright but changeful firelight, have deceived an onlooker into believing him to be a continuation of it; for the baggy tweed trousers which he wore on his immense legs, and which partially hid his loose-fitting brogans, or woodsman's boots, his thick, knitted jersey, his mop of woolly hair, with the cap of coon's fur that adorned it, were a striking mixture of grays, all bordering upon the color of the stump.
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