“I’ll follow that trail after dinner,” says he, catching up the others in time to hear O’Flynn say: 

“If it wusn’t that ye think only a feller that’s been to Caribou can teach ye annything it’s Jimmie O’Flynn that ’ud show ye how to play a chune on that same whip-saw.”

“Will you show us after dinner?”

“Sure I will.”

And he was as good as his word.

This business of turning a tree into boards without the aid of a saw-mill is a thing many placer-miners have to learn; for, even if they are disposed to sleep on the floor, and to do without shelves, they can’t do sluicing without sluice-boxes, and they can’t make those long, narrow boxes without boards.

So every party that is well fitted out has a whip-saw.

“Furrst ye dig a pit,” O’Flynn had said airily, stretched out before the fire after dinner.  “Make it about four feet deep, and as long as ye’d like yer boards.  When ye’ve done that I’ll come and take a hand.”

The little job was not half finished when the light tailed.  Two days more of soil-burning and shovelling saw it done.

“Now ye sling a couple o’ saplings acrost the durrt ye’ve chucked out.  R-right!  Now ye roll yer saw-timber inter the middle.  R-right!  An’ on each side ye want a log to stand on.  See?  Wid yer ‘guide-man’ on top sthradlin’ yer timberr, watchin’ the chalk-line and doin’ the pull-up, and the otherr fellerr in the pit lookin’ afther the haul-down, ye’ll be able to play a chune wid that there whip-saw that’ll make the serryphims sick o’ plain harps.”  O’Flynn superintended it all, and even Potts had the curiosity to come out and see what they were up to.  Mac was “kind o’ dozin’” by the fire.

When the frame was finished O’Flynn helped to put the trial-log in place, having marked it off with charcoal to indicate inch and a quarter planks.  Then the Colonel, down in the pit, and O’Flynn on top of the frame, took the great two-handled saw between them, and began laboriously, one drawing the big blade up, and the other down, vertically through the log along the charcoal line.

“An’ that’s how it’s done, wid bits of yer arrums and yer back that have niver been called on to wurruk befure.  An’ whin ye’ve been at it an hour ye’ll find it goes betther wid a little blasphemin’;” and he gave his end of the saw to the reluctant Potts.

Potts was about this time as much of a problem to his pardners as was the ex-schoolmaster.  If the bank clerk had surprised them all by his handiness on board ship, and by making a crane to swing the pots over the fire, he surprised them all still more in these days by an apparent eclipse of his talents.  It was unaccountable.  Potts’s carpentering, Potts’s all-round cleverness, was, like “payrock in a pocket,” as the miners say, speedily worked out, and not a trace of it afterwards to be found.