tie, making sternly forward. There was no shake on the flume yet; but neither was there time for pause. When the flood struck it would give short warning.
“I’ll let her have a quarter-mile,” said Ormond. “If she stands up to it that won’t be too much.”
He came astraddle the fluming side, and used the chopper with a free arm-swing, beating, cutting and splintering the wood into wreck. He worked backwards, knocking off the top board for a space of five feet. The wind was ice to his chilled body, but the sweat dropped from him. It was such a little chance, and it meant so very much. In the beginning the water had washed round his ankle. Before the first board was off it clung cold to his shin. He talked to it in quick broken words, while the wild night raved over him, and the flume shook on its skeleton trestles, and the rivers tore downwards; flooding the broken race, choking it again with rocks, leaping over by bare bluff and spur to the bottom.
Ormond sprang into the flume, came to one knee, and beat in the lower boards savagely. The water was under his armpits. It was slobbering over the gap. It was deathly cold, and the rush of it nailed him against the side as he battered the wood, blind and desperate.
