The logs, during the winter, had been piled in the bed of the stream. 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 logs would rattle down; at others the whole deck would bulge outward, 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. It was not an easy business, nor a very safe. As the "jam" strung out over more and more of the river, the jam crew was constantly recruited from the men on the rollways. Thus some of the logs, a very few, the luckiest, drifted into the dam pond at Grand Rapids within a few days; the bulk jammed and broke and jammed again at a point a few miles below the rollways, while a large proportion stranded, plugged, caught, and tangled at the very rollways themselves. Jimmy had permitted himself two days in which to "break out" the rollways. It was done in two. Then the "rear" was started. Men in the rear crew had to see that every last log got into the current. When a jam broke, the middle of it shot down-stream in a most spectacular fashion, but along the banks "winged out" most distressingly. Sometimes the heavy sticks of timber had been forced right out on the dry land. The rear crew lifted them back. When an obstinate log grounded, they jumped cheerfully into the water--with the rotten ice swirling around them--and pried the thing off bottom. Between times they stood upright on single, unstable logs and pushed mightily with poles, while the ice-water sucked in and out of their spiked river shoes. As for the compensations, naturally there was a good deal of rivalry between the men on the right and left banks of the river as to which "wing" should advance the fastest; and one experiences a certain physical thrill in venturing under thirty feet of jammed logs for the sole purpose of teasing the whole mass to cascade down on one, or of shooting a rapid while standing upright on a single timber. I believe, too, it is considered the height of glory to belong to a rear crew. Still, the water is cold and the hours long, and you have to sleep in a tent. It can readily be seen that the progress of the "rear" measures the progress of the drive. Some few logs in the "jam" may run fifty miles a day--and often do--but if the sacking has gone slowly at the rear, the drive may not have gained more than a thousand yards. Therefore Jimmy stayed at the rear.