The voice came again and there was pleading in the shrill, staccato notes: "Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!" The cry from dreamland roused his consciousness at last. He sat up startled. There was no thought in his mind but the boats--the boats! In seconds, not minutes, he was in his clothes and stumbling down the dark stairway. There was something ghostly in the hollow echo of his footsteps on the plank sidewalk as he ran through the main street of the still village. He saw that one boat was gone from its mooring before he reached the bank! He could see plainly the space where it had been. The other boats were safe--but the fourth--. He stopped short on the bank for one brief second weak with relief. The fourth barge, which was holding it temporarily. The water by some miracle it had jammed against the third barge which was holding it temporarily. The water was slapping against the side that was turned to the stream and the other was bumping, bumping against the stern of the third boat but the loose barge was working a little closer to the current with each bump. A matter of five minutes more at the most and it would have been started on its journey to destruction. Bruce sprang to the stern of the third barge and dragged the loose bow-line from the water. It was shorter by many feet--the stout, new rope had been cut! It was not necessary to strike a match--the starlight was sufficient to show him that. He stared at it, unable to credit his own eyes. He scrambled over the machinery to the stern. The stern-line was the same--cut square and clean. If further evidence was needed, it was furnished by the severed portion, which was still tied around a bush. There was no more sleep for Bruce that night. Bewildered, dumfounded by the discovery, he rolled himself in a "tarp" and laid down on the boat's platform. So far as he knew he had not an enemy in the town. There seemed absolutely no reasonable explanation for the act. XIX AT THE BIG MALLARD The sun rose the next morning upon an eventful day in Bruce's life. He was backing his judgment--or was it only his mulish obstinacy?--against the conviction of the community. He knew that if it had not been for their personal friendship for himself the married men among his boatmen would have backed out. There was excitement and tension in the air. The wide, yellow river was running like a mill-race, bending the willows, lapping hungrily at the crumbling shore. The bank was black with groups of people, tearful wives and whimpering children, lugubrious neighbors, pessimistic citizens. Bruce called the men together and assigned each boat its place in line. Beyond explicit orders that no boatman should attempt to pass another and the barges must be kept a safe distance apart, he gave few instructions, for they had only to follow his lead. "But if you see I'm in trouble, follow Saunders, who's second. And, Jim, do exactly as Smaltz tells you--you'll be on the hind sweep in the third boat with him."