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His caulks bit far up the side of the log and the force of his impact started it rolling; yet even as he clawed his way to the top of the log and got it under control the iron head of his long pike pole drove into the boom-stick and fended The Laird out of harm's way; before the log the man rode could slip by, the iron had been released and the link of chain between the two boom-sticks had been snagged with the pike hook, and both men drifted side by side.
He had swum to the outer edge of the log boom and grasped the light boom-stick, dozens of which, chained end to end, formed the floating enclosure in which the log supply was stored.
Only a trained river man could have won to him in such a brief space of time; only an athlete could have made the last flying leap across six feet of dark water to a four-foot log that was bearing gently down, butt first, on the figure clinging to the boom-stick.
He clawed his way along the submerging boom-stick to its other end, where it was linked with its neighbor, and the combined buoyancy of both boom-sticks was sufficient to float him. "Careful," he called to the man leaping over the log-field toward him. "The boom is broken! Careful, I tell you! The logs are moving out they're slipping apart. Be careful."
The moment he rested his weight on this boom-stick, however, one end of it submerged suddenly wherefore The Laird knew that the impact of the motor-boat had broken a link of the boom and that this broken end was now sweeping outward and downward, with the current releasing the millions of feet of stored logs.
I believe your man Daney can tell you his name," Darrow replied evasively. "I'll ask Daney. The man was gone before I could recover enough breath to thank him for my life. Sorry to have messed up your boom, Bert, but we'll stop the runaways at my boom and I'll have them towed back in the morning. And I'll have a man put in a new boom-stick and connect it up again."
Handicapped as he was with his overcoat, old Hector found it a prodigious task to reach the boom; as he clung to the boom-stick he could make out the figure of a man with a pike pole coming toward him in long leaps across the logs. And then old Hector noticed something else.
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