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Updated: May 21, 2025
Then, since his own experience left him without resource, he hastened straightway to George Balt. A half-hour's run down the bay and he clambered from his launch to the pile-driver, where, amid the confusion and noise, he made known his tidings. The big fellow's calmness amazed him. "What are you going to do now?" "Butcher by hand," said the fisherman. "But how?
"I takes a good notice o' the pianner, an' I don't like her looks, sittin' up there so high on that little deck. "'We oughter tie her on good an' tight, says I. "She's a upright, yeh see, an' she's as top-heavy as a pile-driver. I was afeard she'd strike a low limb or somethin' an' git smashed.
"Whoa, you Teddy! What's the matter with you?" cried the owner of the horse angrily. "Quit your two-stepping, can't you?" The animal had been gentle enough all day, but now a devil of unrest seemed to have entered it. The sound of trampling hoofs thudded on the hard, sun-baked earth as the bronco came down like a pile-driver, camel-backed, with legs stiff and unjointed.
The great heat and dampness of the place had warped the runways; almost every other time they let that hammer drop, it jumped the runways and into the river. But that was all right. They could fish her out and hoist her up by man power again. It was when they left the solid bank and had to put out into the river that their troubles began. A pile-driver ought to have a pretty solid foundation.
This would take care of an extra two feet of water; a two feet beyond all previous records. Another crew stretched the fifteen inch manilla cables across the field of logs in order to segregate them into several units of mass, and so prevent them from piling up at the down-stream end of the enclosure. The pile-driver began to drop its hammer at spots of weakness.
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."
"I reckon you'll need the tug," said Marsh. 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.
You would save something in wages if you built a pile-driver to sink those posts." "I haven't the men or time. If I don't get this part of the work done before the frost comes, it's going to cost me more. It would mean using powder and making fires to thaw out the ground." Charnock agreed and went on.
And here, now, in spite of the frantic efforts of Dave Logan and his crew, the logs suddenly began to jam. Pitching downward as if propelled by a pile-driver, certain great timbers drove their ends between the upstanding strata of the slate, and held against the torrent till others came and wedged them securely. The jam began between two ledges in midstream, where no one could get near it.
One of the whey-faced clerks said with the supercilious asperity characteristic of gnat-brained headquarters attaches: "Get out of here!" as if I had been a stray cur wandering in in search of a bone lunch. I wanted to feed the fellow to a pile-driver.
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