that I can, now as always, trust you to shed glory upon our arms,
and to maintain our noble fame and honorable traditions.

"The enemy is before us. You have heard and seen his challenge.
It behooves us to respond gallantly. To jump and skip like
rabbits is unmilitary and unsoldierlike. I propose that each of
us shall select two large logs, tie them together, procure, if
possible, a boat-hook or an oar, and, sitting astride the logs,
boldly push out into the river. If we can advance in a tolerably
even line, which I think quite possible, we can send so deadly a
charge into the ranks of our adversaries that they will be
compelled to flee. Then we will land on the east side, occupy
the heights, and rout our foe.

"Now let each man do his duty. Forward, march!"

The lumbermen, whose sympathies were with the East-Siders, found
this performance highly diverting, but Viggo allowed himself in
nowise to be disturbed by their laughter or jeers. He marched
his troops down to the river-front, commanded "Rest arms!" and
repeated once more his instructions; then, flinging off his coat
and waistcoat, he seized a boat-hook and ran some hundred yards
along the bank of the stream.

The river-bed was here expanded to a wide basin, in which the
logs floated lazily down to the cataract below. Trees and
underbrush, which usually stood on dry land, were half-submerged
in the yellow water, and the current gurgled slowly about their
trunks with muddy foam and bubbles. Now and then a heap of
lumber would get wedged in between the jutting rocks above the