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Jim came in sight of the bridge or, rather, its remains a few seconds later, and saw at once what had happened. The dull, chopping noise which had first attracted his attention had been caused by axe-strokes, and the bridge had been cut through from the farther side, allowing it to fall into the ravine. In a moment the significance of the occurrence flashed into Douglas's mind.
At last the right tree came crashing down, and a branch of the flowers was brought up, to be carried home, and verified at Port of Spain; and meanwhile, disturbed by the axe-strokes, pair after pair of birds flew screaming over the tree-tops, which looked like rooks, till, as they turned in the sun, their colour brilliant even at that distance showed them to be great green parrots.
"Are you criticising the wild jasmine?" I asked. "I'm criticising an exotic smell. Am I not permitted to comment on the tropics?" Fishing out a cedar log from the lumber-stack, I fell to chopping it vigorously. The axe-strokes made a cheerful racket through the woods. "Did you hear anything last night after you retired?" I asked.
Now he harboured no whim to figure as the sole victim of the raid to be arrested as a common gambler, loaded to the guards with cash and unable to give any creditable account of himself. "Damn!" said P. Sybarite thoughtfully. The front doors still held, though shaking beneath a shower of axe-strokes that filled the house with sonorous echoes.
And a narrow escape when young had taught him to shun trap and snare, and everything that savoured of the hated works of man. Now, the lumbermen had found their way to his shadowy domain. Loud axe-strokes, the crash of falling trees, the hard clank of ox-chains, jarred the solemn stillness.
The axe-strokes stopped; so suddenly that the ear went on hearing them, ghost-like, in the intense silence. 'Gene stood upright, lifting his wet, gray face. "She's coming now," he said. Marise looked out, astonished. To her eyes the tree stood as massively firm as she had ever seen it.
Had he seen that face before, or why did it provoke vague reminiscences of great cypresses overhead, and deep-shaded leafy distances with bayous winding out of sight through them, and cane-brakes impenetrable to the eye, and axe-strokes heard but unseen slashing through them only a few feet away? Suddenly he knew.
The brooks shall be my washing-basins, and I shall quench hunger and thirst in the tiled kitchens of lonely farmsteads. If I hear the shriek of a train I shall smile when I think of its cooped and harried passengers, and plunge devious into some pathless wood, in whose depths the only sounds are the tap of the woodpecker's bill or the measured axe-strokes of the woodman.
Feeling himself the hero of the hour, he handled his axe brilliantly, and soon forgot his indignation against Laurette. At length he attacked the centre pile, the key to the whole structure. Everybody, at this point, held his breath. Loud sounded the measured axe-strokes over the rush of the swollen river. No one moved but Reddin, and no one but Laurette noticed his movement.
The present tower and chime of the University of Michigan did not then exist; between the two main buildings on the university grounds there was simply a wooden column, bearing a bell of moderate size, which was rung at every lecture-hour by the principal janitor. One cold winter night those of us living in the immediate neighborhood heard the sound of axe-strokes.
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