The long smooth water shot over, like fluid steel, silent and inevitable, mirroring distorted flashes of light that were the stars. Below, it broke in white turmoil, shouting defiance at the calm velvet rush above. Ten seconds later the current was broken. A man, his heels caught against the combing, up to his knees in water, was braced back at the exact angle to withstand the rush. Two other men passed down to him a short heavy timber. A third, plunging his arms and shoulders into the liquid, nailed it home with heavy, inaudible strokes. As though by magic a second timber braced the first, bolted through sockets already cut for it. The workers moved on eight feet, then another eight, then another. More men entered the water. A row of heavy, slanted supports grew out from the shoulder of the dam, dividing the waters into long, arrow-shaped furrows of light. At half-past twelve Tom Clute was swept over the dam into the eddy. He swam ashore. Purdy took his place. When the supports had reached out over half of the river's span, and the water was dotted with the shoulders of men gracefully slanted against the current, Jimmy gave orders to begin placing the flash-boards. Heavy planks were at once slid across the supports, where the weight of the racing water at once clamped them fast. Spikes held the top board beyond the possibility of a wrench loose. The smooth, quiet river, interrupted at last, murmured and snarled and eddied back, only to rush with increased vehemence around the end of the rapidly growing obstruction. The policeman, passing back and forth on Canal Street, heard no sound of the labour going on. If he had been an observant policeman, he would have noted an ever-changing tone in the volume of sound roaring up from the eddy below the dam. After a time even he remarked on a certain obvious phenomenon. "Sure!" said he; "now, that's funny!" He listened a moment, then passed on. The vagaries of the river were, after all, nothing to him. He belonged on Canal Street, east side; and Canal Street, east side, seemed peaceful. The river had fallen absolutely silent. The last of Jimmy's flash-boards was in place. Back in the sleeping town the clock in Pierce's Tower struck two. Jimmy and his men, having thus raised the level of the dam a good three feet, emerged dripping from the west-side canal, and cheerfully took their way northward to where, in the chilly dawn, their companions were sleeping the sleep of the just. As they passed the riffles they paused. A heavy grumbling issued from the logs jammed there, a grumbling brutish and sullen, as though the reluctant animals were beginning to stir. The water had already backed up from the raised dam.