Well (drill)

“ Sinking down, deeper down, Oh, we're going deeper down Though the shaft is always caving, and the tubes are always jamming, Yet we'll fight our way to water while the stubborn drill is ramming — While the stubborn drill is ramming deeper down. ”

“ From rock to rock the stream was running a white, furious, rushing torrent, and the little boat tugging and jibbing on her chain, and swinging and bobbing upon the top of the froth, like the leaves which danced upon the eddy. Dreadnought had heard the sound of the river, and knew what there was at work before us. The boat was moored near the throat of the pool, in the back-water of a little bay, now entirely filled with froth and foam up to the gunwale of the coble, which was defended by a sharp point of rock, from whose breakwater the stream was thrown off in a wild shooting torrent. ”

“ As the tide was down, it required a considerable detour to reach the spot, and when at last they came off the ladder-way, the mangled body had disappeared. The water was now running in, submerging first one slab of slimy rock and then another, and the four men in the boat—the workmen, that is, the boatman, and Mr. Fison—now turned their attention from the bearings off shore to the water beneath the keel.
At first they could see little below them, save a dark jungle of laminaria, with an occasional darting fish. Their minds were set on adventure, and they expressed their disappointment freely. ”

“ But forty men, all busily at work, soon had the river full. Orde detailed some six or eight to drop below in order that the river might run clear to the next section, where the next crew would take up the task. These men, quite simply, walked to the edges of the rollway, rolled a log apiece into the water, stepped aboard, leaned against their peavies, and were swept away by the swift current. The logs on which they stood whirled in the eddies, caromed against other timbers, slackened speed, shot away; never did the riders alter their poses of easy equilibrium. ”

“ The perils of "stream-driving" on a bad river have been dwelt upon, I suppose, by every writer who has occupied his pen at all with the life of the lumber-camps. But to the daring backwoodsman there seldom falls a task more hazardous than that of cutting loose a brow of logs when the logs have been piled in the form of what is called a "rough-and-tumble landing." Such a landing is constructed by driving long timbers into the mud at the water's edge, below a steep piece of bank. ”

“ The duty of a skilled white man, single-handed, in rock such as is usually met below the zone of oxidation, is from 5 to 7 feet per shift, depending on the rock and the man. Two men hand-drilling will therefore do from 1/4 to 2/3 of the same footage of holes that can be done by two men with a heavy machine-drill, and two men hand-drilling will do from 1/5 to 1/2 the footage of two men with two light drills. ”

“ But it’s just circumstances. I simply can’t work, and things have to drift; it’s no good to fret and struggle. And so I lie here and am as amused as a baby with a rattle, at this river and its affairs.
“Sometimes, of course, it gets a bit dull, but not often.
“I would give anything, Wilderspin, for a swamp—just one swamp—once. Heads swimming and a steam launch to the rescue, and a chap or so hauled out with a boat-hook.... There goes Fitzgibbon’s launch! They have a new boat-hook, I see, and the little blackie is still in the dumps. I don’t think he’s very well, Wilderspin. ”

“ Also I was just about to tell him of seeing her before, but the chaffing tone he used somehow shut me up on the subject.
So I only said, gaily: “Bowled over by the Lady of the Lake!” and laughed back at him.
“That’s what she’s called up here,” he informed me. “She’s in her canoe so much and manages it so perfectly, she seems like a part of it. Of course, wherever she goes, she has to go in that or in some boat. Can’t get on and off an island in a motor car.”
“Must be an awful nuisance.”
“She doesn’t find it so. Says she likes it better than a motor. Look at her paddle. Isn’t she an expert?” ”

“ When the drill has bored a hole, one of these chains is gripped by an arm, also magnetized, which extends from the diving bell, and the pontoon hook on the end of the chain is set into the hole in the vessel, where it is automatically locked. ”

“ The boat seemed undecided. Would it hold to the harbor of safety into which it had been drawn by the friendly current? Would it swing out, again, into the main stream, and so to its own destruction?
Three times the bow, pointing out from the eddy, crossed the danger-line, and, for a moment, hung on the very edge. Three times, the invisible hands which held it drew it gently back to safety. And so, finally, the little craft, so helpless, so alone, amid the many currents of the great river, came to rest against the narrow shelf of land at the foot of the bank below Auntie Sue's garden. ”

“ These strung-drills were common form to Pŭl-Yūn who had known them all his life, and expected nothing more from them than they were made to yield, and had long since disclosed of use. As for playing with them, it had no more occurred to him to amuse himself by playing tricks with a strung-drill than it occurs to your harvestman to use his scythe handle as a vaulting-pole, or to your gardener to practise throwing with his fork at a target, or to toss and catch his spade. The implements of labour are invested with the seriousness due to maturity; respect should be paid to them ”

“ The very worst thing o' the lot was the boat-drill. A chap might be sitting comfortably at his grub, or having a pipe in his bunk, when the bos'en's whistle would scream out to him that the ship was sinking, an' the passengers drownding, and he was to come an' git the boats out an' save 'em. ”

“ Above all, do not hurry, for little is seen by those who hasten on.
At a weir of sticks and stones forming a rather wide dam, overgrown by tall hemp-agrimony now in flower, we met with our first difficulty. There was no overflow to help us, for in this time of drought the mill-wheel needed all the stream to turn it; so the boat had to be lifted over the stakes and stones. Into the water we had to go, and boots and socks, being now put aside, were not worn again for five days, except when we went ashore in the evening, and had to make an effort to look respectable. ”

“ Wet wood gripped the long saws vice-like, so that a man's utmost strength could scarcely budge them. The water deadened the force of axe-blows. Nevertheless, with the sure persistence of the riverman, they held to it. Orde, watching them a few moments, satisfied himself that they would succeed, and so departed up river to take charge of the rear.
This crew he found working busily among some overflowed woods. They were herding the laggards of the flock. The subsidence of the water consequent upon the opening of the sluice-gate had left stranded and in shallows many hundreds of the logs. ”

“ With the first light the entire crew were at the banks of the river.
As soon as the wind died the logs had begun to drift slowly out into the open water. The surface of the pond was covered with the scattered timbers floating idly. After a few moments the clank of the bars and ratchet was heard as two of the men raised the heavy sluice-gate on the dam. A roar of water, momently increasing, marked the slow rise of the barrier. A very imaginative man might then have made out a tendency forward on the part of those timbers floating nearest the centre of the pond. ”

“ I put my unused sketch-pad behind me, gazing back regretfully over the yellow flood. The men pushed the boat out on to the waters and sprang in themselves, each armed with a long paddle; one taking his stand in front of us, one at the stern, and directed our little craft to the centre of the huge and sullen stream. It rolled from side to side as it shot out over the surface, but as soon as the men got their paddles to work, evenly with long alternate strokes, the flood bore us along, swiftly, smoothly, the dug-out floating steadily without rocking. ”

“ As soon as I realized what the sound was, I sprang up and hurried to the window. But I saw no boat. Whether the same girl or some one else, the boat and whoever paddled it, were out of sight, and though I heard, or imagined I heard, a faint and diminishing sound as of paddling, I could see no craft of any sort.
I strained my eyes to see if her canoe was still beached in front of Pleasure Dome, but the moon was unfriendly now, and I could not distinguish objects on the beach. ”

“ A short rope led to the top of the dam allowed the bow to be lifted free of the obstruction; a cable astern prevented the current from throwing her broadside to the rush of waters; another cable from the bow led her in the way she should go. Ten minutes later she was pulled ashore out of the eddy below, very much water-logged, and manned by a drenched and disgruntled crew.
But Orde allowed them little chance for lamentation.
“Hard luck!” he said briefly. “Hope you haven't lost much. Now get a move on you and bail out. You've got to get over the shallows while this head is on.” ”

“ Back to the trail!" He fell swearing at his horse and sawed the bit across its mouth.
He shouted aloud with rage. "I will follow that trail, I tell you," he cried. "Where is the trail?"
He gripped the bridle of his prancing horse and searched amidst the grass. A long and clinging thread fell across his face, a grey streamer dropped about his bridle arm, some big, active thing with many legs ran down the back of his head. He looked up to discover one of those grey masses anchored as it were above him by these things and flapping out ends as a sail flaps when a boat comes about--but noiselessly. ”

“ Having accomplished this formidable labour—for the trees had to be cut and hauled, the stone carted, and the earth shovelled—the crew next moved down a good ten miles to where the river dropped over a rapids rough and full of boulders. Here were built and placed a row of stone-filled log cribs in a double row down stream to define the channel and to hold the drive in it and away from the shallows near either bank. The profile of these cribs was that of a right-angled triangle, the slanting side up stream. Booms chained between them helped deflect the drive from the shoals. ”

“ They extended over three miles of rollways. Jimmy and his crew began at the down-stream end to tumble the big piles into the current. Sometimes only two or three of the logs would rattle down; at others the whole deck would bulge outwards, hover for a moment, and roar into the stream like grain from an elevator. Shortly the narrows below the rollways jammed. Twelve men were detailed as the “jam crew.” Their business was to keep the stream free in order that the constantly increasing supply from the rollways might not fill up the river. ”

“ We must prevent the waves from dashing the boats against the cliffs. Sometimes, where the river is swift, we must put a bight of rope about a rock, to prevent the boat from being snatched from us by a wave; but where the plunge is too great or the chute too swift, we must let her leap and catch her below or the undertow will drag her under the falling water and sink her. Where we wish to run her out a little way from shore through a channel between rocks, we first throw in little sticks of driftwood and watch their course, to see where we must steer so that she will pass the channel in safety. ”

“ On one occasion, having continued to float at night, after the moon was down, they ran under a great snag, or sunken tree, with dry branches above the water. These caught the mast, while the boat swung round, broadside to the stream, and began to fill with water. Nothing saved her from total wreck, but cutting away the mast. She then drove down the stream, but left one of the unlucky half-breeds clinging to the snag, like a monkey to a pole. ”

“ Nothing would then remain, but for safety's sake to strike their masts and yards, as they always do when they go down the river; they must lie broadside foremost, the strong wind blowing perpendicular on one side of the vessel, and the violent current pushing it in a contrary direction on the other; while a man, with a long oar, balances the advantage the wind has of the stream, by the hold it has of the cabin and upper works. ”

“ Don’t they have to have scows alongside?”
“In the first place, it is n’t mud, at least not much of it. It is mostly sand and gravel, What a suction dredge devours goes into bins in her own hold, then it is taken out to sea and dumped. Do you see how low she is in the water? I guess they have just been waiting for us before putting out to sea to dump their load. I see the other dredge is over at Rockaway Inlet. I ’ll put you aboard this dredge, and by the time I get back from Rockaway, your boat will have dumped its load and returned.” ”

“ Immediately, and with feverish activity, the men nearest at hand attacked the work. Logs on top they tumbled and rolled into the current below. Men beneath the breast tugged and pried in search of the key logs causing all the trouble. Others “flattened out the wings,” hoping to get a “draw” around the ends. As the stoppage of the drive indicated to the men up and down stream that a jam had formed, they gathered at the scene—those from above over the logs, those from below up the river trail. ”

“ Having, apparently, decided that it would be unwise to cultivate a closer acquaintance with two men in a boat, our swimmer humped his back, lifted high his broad tail and with it struck the water a powerful slap, the noise of which reverberated from "Mud Pond Mountain to East Inlet Holler" and it threw a shower of water and spray eight or ten feet into the air, looking like some of the war pictures of exploding mines. ”