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Updated: May 1, 2025
Redjacket looks at him sneeringly, and, pole in hand, steps out on to the boom, a little way above the bridge. Then, springing over to the raft, he chooses his craft for the voyage a buoyant pine stem, short and thick, and stripped of its bark. The young man smiles, with a curious expression, as he looks on. "Did you see?" whispers one on the bridge to his neighbour.
"Well, who's to go first?" said Falk. "Let me," says Redjacket. "As you please," said Olof. Moisio turned to the headmen again. "You'll have some men on the farther bank," he said, "in case of accidents." "Not on my account," puts in Redjacket scornfully. "But if the other man here wants fishing up...." "Have them there if you like," says Olof. "'Twill do no harm."
"Tra la la la!" sings Redjacket, undismayed. And he takes a couple of dance-steps on his log. "He's no greenhorn, anyhow," the crowd agree. And some of them glance at Olof to see how he takes their praise of his rival. But Olof does not seem to heed; he is watching the water with a certain impatience no more. Just then Redjacket's log strikes a sunken rock, and is thrust backward.
"Have done with that!" cries a stern voice from the crowd. "'Tis no time for mockery." "What's it to you whether I choose to sing or pray?" cries Redjacket, with an oath. But he stops his show of praying, all the same, and picks up his pole again. He is nearing the bridge now. Already the angry water swirls over the stem and laps his boots, but he stands fast.
Redjacket stops his manoeuvres now, gives a bold glance towards the bridge, then, with a shrill whistle, fixes the point of his pole in the wood; and, stepping back a little, with his hands on his hips, begins, mockingly, to "say his prayers." "There! Ever see such a lad?" Redjacket's partisans look round proudly at the rest. "Look at him look!"
"Mark my words, he knows what he's about." "Look out ahead!" Redjacket slips his tree trunk under the boom, and steps out on to it. Then with a touch of his foot he sends it round and round spinning it, and sending up the water on either side. "Ay, he's a smart lad," say the onlookers on the bridge.
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