Then the River cracked loudly: the ice roared and broke, and piled itself up in bars and ridges and grumbled and swung and went away with the ebb and up with the flood, roaring all the time. "Now they start up the Moola queek," said Pete as day by day he saw less ice. The rain poured down and the river was almost in flood already, though the winter held up-country, of course. When the frost broke in the wet Cascades and up in Cariboo, and in the head waters of the forking Thompson, there would be a proper amount of water in the Cañon. And still he waited. But in the Mill they started at last, and came nigh to the end of the Mill boom before they could get a steamer to tow them up the new boom. Then they got it, and Pete heard that it was there. "I make heem sick," said Pete, still waiting. And the spiked logs waited. Their time must come. It came at last, and of that day men of the Hills still speak. It was one of Ginger White's devilish days, when he hated himself and his kind and was willing to burst himself if he could make others sigh or groan. He ran the crew of the Mill almost to death, and death came at last as the day died down and found them running the saws screaming in logs still cold within. For the winter left the men soft: they had been half-fed, many of them: they had lived idle lives, and found work hard on their hands, hard on their muscles. But Ginger never failed when the devil was in him. The winter was over: he wanted to work, for he was all behind with money. "I'll make 'em sweat, I'll make 'em skip," said Ginger. That day Quin was much in the Mill, and he was there when the lightning struck Skookum Charlie: when the saws spouted fire. He, too, was glad to get back to labour: to the doing of things. And he loved the Mill, as many did. It was a great log of spruce that carried death within it. High up above the Saws hung a lamp so that Skookum and his partner could see the cut as well as feel it. The whole Mill squealed and trembled: every machine within it ran full blast: the song of the Mill was great. "Oh, heave and roll," said the Bull-Wheel. They got the log on the carriage, drove in the dogs and Ginger sent her at the eager saws. He cut the slab off, and then set her for an eight-inch cant and got her half through, when the lightning came. There was a horrid rip, a grinding, deafening crash and streams of fire came out of the cut log. On top of it was Skookum driving home a wedge. He drove it deep and deeper, and as the crash came, Quin stood where he had stood when Pete went for him. There was another horrid scream as the smashed saw broke and hurled a jagged quadrant upward from the cut.