"Indeed!" said she; "and how have you done that?"
"I have done it," was Fisher's grave answer, "by throwing overboard the Baron Savitch."
Miss Ward burst into a ringing laugh. "You are sometimes too droll, Mr. Fisher," she said.
Villate's "drive" of logs had jammed at the foot of Red Rapids in the very throat of the main "pitch," where the Aux Lièvres falls over the ledges into the "glut-hole" fifty feet below. Named "glut-hole" by the river-men; for lumber falling in here will sometimes circle a month, unless poled out. The waters whirl and are drawn down with a peculiar sinuous motion. Bodies going over are long engulfed, and sometimes never reappear, for the basin is of great depth and there are caverns under water beneath the shelving ledges, such as the drivers call _cachots d'enfer_, and have invested with a superstitious character, as the abode of evil spirits of the flood--a thing not greatly to be wondered at; for a wilder locality could hardly be cited, its rugged cliffs of red sandstone, hung with enormous lichens, like sides of leather, and overhung from high above with shaggy black spruces.
There were seven and a-half million feet of lumber in Villate's drive that spring. Every stick of it went into the great jam above the glut-hole. The rough fortunes of youth made me an eye-witness of the scene. A wilder spectacle I never saw throughout the lumbering region during a space of eight years. The gates of the dams at the foot of all the lakes were up; the volume of water was immense. Rocks, which in summer stand twenty feet out of the rapids, were now under water. The torrent came pouring down the long incline, black and swift as an arrow, and went over into the pool at one thunderous plunge, throwing up a vast column of mist. Two ledges only, situated in the very throat of the "pitch," showed above water. These rocks the lumbering company had designed to blast out the previous autumn, but had been prevented by heavy rains. They then stood twenty-seven feet out of water. Now their crests are barely exposed, and the flood washes over them in its mighty rhythm-motion. In the rapids the whole stream is compressed to a width of a little more than seventy yards.