The atmosphere was strange, charged, electric, strained. There were days when the Tyee Sawyer left them slack, and went easy. Now they jumped, their eyes were bright, they sweated, got alive, moved like lightning. Each was an automaton; each a note struck by the Player. And he played, oh, tilikum, he played! This was work, tilikum, such as even the Stick Moola hadn't known. The engines knew it, and the steam gauges told it and the fires, and the sawdust carriers. Chinamen knew it and shrieked horrid oaths at each other. The belts knew it and squealed. Scotty knew it and groaned, for he alone, bar accidents, could stop Ginger's drunken debauch of labour. But the men he played on knew it best and almost cheered him when they got the pace and found it at first so easy. They were all young, not an old man among them, Ginger White himself was the senior of them all. They could love and work and fight and play hell, for they had youth in them. They had to show it to the song and dance of the Saw, the song and dance of the flying dust. The engines ran easy, and their muscles played beneath a glistening moist skin as with open shirts they did what came to their hands. "Go it, you devils," and "Let her scoot," and "Oh, hell," they said. They smiled and were happy enough, but as the hum increased and the great skids got full over against the Pony Saw, you might have seen Long Mac's smile die down into a good settled seriousness, quite worth seeing. Long Mac had a way of dreaming as he worked, for he had a power of thought and was sadly intelligent, but when Ginger started trying them high, he had no time to think, well as he knew all things a saw-mill man may and shall know. The skids were piled high, you shall understand, you greenhorns, and he knew how it would rejoice Ginger White to see that they would take no more, while everything the wedgers-off tried to sling on the pile rolled backwards to the very rollers. That would please White: he would give a shrug of his shoulders as if to say-- "What a damned loafing lazy lot I've to do with!" "To hell with Ginger," said Mac. He set his teeth. The lumber flew: he took risks: for swift running in a Mill means risks. Some of the lumber was shaky, ring-shakes and wind-shakes were in it, and in some of the wet-shakes fine white gum. When the saw strikes a shake the loose pieces work out: some are like to touch the teeth of the saw and get picked up! What that means is that the helper to the Pony Saw is shot at by jagged lumps of wood: they come by whizzing like a horrid bullet. Mac and his man watched and at times Mac lifted his hand and his helper ducked as the Saw said "Phit, phit," and threw things at him. It was exciting, it made the blood run fast in his veins to know that at any moment he might be killed, and be so quiet.