Charnock hooked the chain round the smallest log he could find and started the horses.  They slipped and floundered as they plodded through the soft snow.  Sometimes the log ran for a few yards, crushing down the surface, but it often sank overhead and the team struggled hard to drag it out.  For all that, Charnock reached the top of the slope, and turning back, widened the trail he had made.  The next log ran easier, although it gave him trouble, but when he stopped at noon he had beaten down a road.

When they started again he left the team to somebody else and joined the men who were clearing out a trough down the hill.  This was harder work, but the small contractor finds it pays to give his men a lead instead of orders, and for a time Charnock used the shovel and his feet.  Then Festing said they had better move a few logs as far as they would go, and they worked the first trunk down hill with handspikes and tackles.  The lumber scored the bottom of the trough and would not run, and they struggled through the banked-up snow, lifting the heavy mass when it sank.  Now and then they fixed the tackle to a tree and dragged the log across short skids thrust under its end, and at length launched it from the brow of the steeper pitch.

It plunged down some distance, but stopped again, half buried in loose snow, and they scrambled after it, clinging to small trees.  Then the work got dangerous.  One could scarcely stand on the steep bank, and when the log started it rather leaped than slid.  Spikes, torn from the men’s hands, shot into the air, and those in front sprang back for their lives, but the mass seldom went far before loose snow brought it up and the struggle with the levers began again.  At last, it slipped from a hummock and glided slowly down, crumpling the snow in front, while a man, clinging to the butt and shouting hoarse jokes, trailed down the track behind.

Moving the next was easier, and those that followed ran without much help for most of the way, while when dark came the bank at the top was empty and there was a pile of logs held up by the chain at the waterside.  Their descent had worn the channel smooth, and it was now difficult to stop them going too far.  In a day or two Festing brought the most part of his material to the spot where it would be used, and got ready to put up the frames.

Stinging frost set in, and on the morning they cleared the ground for the first post Charnock felt daunted as he beat his numbed hands.  The sky was clear; a hard, dazzling blue, against which the white peaks were silhouetted with every ridge and pinnacle in sharp outline.  They twinkled like steel in places, but there were patches of delicate gray, and here and there a dark rock broke through its covering.  The bottom of the gorge was soft blue, and the river a streak of raw indigo, but there was no touch of warm color in the savage landscape.  The glitter made Charnock’s eyes ache and the reflected sunshine burned his skin.