The unknown who warned him was right.  He must jump overboard and take his chance in the river, for it was too late now to slow down and put his motor in reverse.  In the impending crash that was only a matter of seconds, The Laird would undoubtedly catapult from the stern sheets into the water—­and if he should drift in under the logs, knew the river would eventually give up his body somewhere out in the Bight of Tyee.  On the other hand, should he be thrown out on the boom he would stand an equal chance of being seriously injured by the impact or crushed to death when his helpless body should fall between the logs.  In any event the boat would be telescoped down to the cockpit and sink at the edge of the log field.

He was wearing a heavy overcoat, for it was late in the fall, and he had no time to remove it; not even time to stand up and dive clear.  So he merely hurled his big body against the starboard gunwale and toppled overboard—­and thirty feet further on the boat struck with a crash that echoed up and down the river, telescoped and drove under the log boom.  It was not in right when old Hector rose puffing to the surface and bellowed for help before starting to swim for the log boom.

The voice answered him instantly:  “Coming!  Hold On!”

Handicapped as he was with his overcoat, old Hector found it a prodigious task to reach the boom; as he clung to the boom-stick he could make out the figure of a man with a pike pole coming toward him in long leaps across the logs.  And then old Hector noticed something else.

He had swum to the outer edge of the log boom and grasped the light boom-stick, dozens of which, chained end to end, formed the floating enclosure in which the log supply was stored.  The moment he rested his weight on this boom-stick, however, one end of it submerged suddenly—­wherefore The Laird knew that the impact of the motor-boat had broken a link of the boom and that this broken end was now sweeping outward and downward, with the current releasing the millions of feet of stored logs.  Within a few minutes, provided he should keep afloat, he would be in the midst of these tremendous Juggernauts, for, clinging to the end of the broken boom he was gradually describing a circle on the outside of the log field, swinging from beyond the middle of the river in to the left-hand bank; presently, when the boom should have drifted its maximum distance he would be hung up stationary in deep water while the released logs bore down upon him with the current and gently shoulder him into eternity.

He clawed his way along the submerging boom-stick to its other end, where it was linked with its neighbor, and the combined buoyancy of both boom-sticks was sufficient to float him.

“Careful,” he called to the man leaping over the log-field toward him.  “The boom is broken!  Careful, I tell you!  The logs are moving out—­they’re slipping apart.  Be careful.”

Even as he spoke, The Laird realized that the approaching rescuer would not heed him.  He had to make speed out to the edge of the moving logs; if he was to rescue the man clinging to the boom-sticks he must take a chance on those long leaps through the dusk; he must reach The Laird before too much open water developed between the moving logs.