Old man Villate himself, with his red cap over his ears, came puffing down, shouting at the top of his lungs. We could see his lips fly. The hitch was betwixt the shelving ledges on the east side and one of the mid-channel rocks. It was not one log that had caught, else the weight of the water would have broken it out. It appeared that two large sticks had come down with the ends lying across each other, and a third log, perhaps several logs, overlying these. When the current sucked them through the rapid, between the centre rock and the shore ledges, the outward ends of the crossed logs struck on both sides. Instantly the current and the momentum of the overlying logs thrust the submerged ends of the cross among the rocks on the bottom of the channel, and the momentarily increasing weight of logs held them there--this at least was the theory at the time. When first we got down there, however, there were more than a thousand logs in the glut; and the ends stood up like a porcupine's quills, at every conceivable angle. The obstructing logs in the throat of the fall bore the pressure rather lengthwise than across the fibre. These sticks were of yellow spruce, fifty feet long, and fully three feet through. Such logs, when green, will bear an enormous strain. From the way the exposed ends sprang we knew they were buckling like steel rods, yet they held pertinaciously. The river above was covered with logs. Scores came shooting down every minute, striking into the jam like arrows. The most of these stuck in it. Some few went clean over it, or through it, for the first ten minutes, into the hole below. Logs would glance from the slippery black rocks and go a hundred feet clear of the water, such was the strength of the rapid. I saw sticks of free pine--where they struck the rocks one half on--go in halves from end to end like split-beans--logs forty and fifty feet long; yet the owners never cease to wonder how the lumber gets so badly "broomed up;" for the ends of the logs resemble nothing so much as a paint-brush. The warps were brought, and Villate called for volunteers to go down, or rather be let down, the ledges and prize off the shore ends of the jammed logs with "peevies." There were plenty of bold fellows; but every man hesitated. Murmurs of "_certaine mort_," "_sur mort_," "_porte du tombeau_," "_porte d'enfer_," arose and were repeated. "It's a hard world, but I wants to tarry in it a spell longer, boss!" said one grizzled old Yankee from the Maine rivers, with a sage shake of his long head. We all knew that when the jam started it would go through like an avalanche. Whoever was down there would have to go with it--into the glut-hole.