It was a heavy, all-night downpour—heavy even for the ever-moist West Coast, where rain is never prayed for. The three piners—Jones, Sullivan and Oliver—listened to its patterings on their tent and rejoiced. They had a cargo of logs all ready for transport to the sea-board, but an unusually dry spell had kept the river low. A flood is the Tasmanian pine-cutter’s waggon, railway, or lighter—the means by which he gets his goods to market.
Daylight saw it raining as consistently as ever. The river roared along with a full pressure of dirt-discolored water— sweeping away logs, trees, and the varied flotsam and jetsam contributed by the forests through which it took its course. The men hurried an early breakfast, for there was work ahead. They were soon at it—clearing and starting laggard logs; pushing others clear of the eddies into the run; and averting threatened ‘jambs’. Wet, cold work—yet exciting for the spice of danger in it. There is a fascinating wildness in the disorderly procession of flood-borne logs. Their passage is fraught with many uncertainties. Now arrested by low extending arms of the river scrub; now carried forward by the smooth, swift fresh of the deep reaches; on, ever onward, to the mad swirl of the rapids, over which they shoot erratically, now hurled right out of the water, and again diving into the depths; the noise of their contact with the boulders resounding above the din of waters. An evervarying picture of man’s utilisation of the forces of Nature to serve his ends.
About mid-day the party decided to embark in their punts and follow their timber. Rain was still falling, and the river increasing in volume. Securing their effects, away they went, scarcely any pulling being necessary other than to assist the steersman, whose post is no sinecure when so much debris is awash.
All went well with them for about half of their journey— the worst half—till they came to a rapid at the foot of which a small island divided the stream. Just as the boat was fairly in the swift ‘run’, at the top of the fall, she grated heavily on an unnoticed submerged snag—a sharp and deadly obstacle which tore the thin planking of the boat’s bottom as if it had been brown-paper. In an instant she filled and rolled over, throwing out her crew, who were swirled forward by the furious rush of icy water—bruised against the rocks, and half smothered. Oliver went down stream for some distance, till at last he managed to grasp some bushes and pull himself ashore. The others effected a landing on the island, which was but a few inches above water. The wrecked boat was swept clear away.
Oliver lay till he regained his breath. Then he looked round for his companions, whom he had not seen since the capsize; he knew that neither of them could swim. His coo-ees brought no response—nor could they have been heard far above the din of the river. He mounted a small promontory, from which he could see up and down stream for half a mile or so. On the little rocky islet, surrounded by the raging torrent, he saw his two mates. Sullivan was busy about a small log which some former flood had stranded, Jones lay apparently inert and helpless—though not dead, as Oliver first thought. Their position was precarious, as the river was steadily rising. Sullivan, working with all his energy to get the log clear of the bushes, was too occupied to notice his mate’s signals. It was evident that Sullivan meant to use the log as a means of escape. He carried his hapless, injured comrade to it and secured him on the log with strips of shirting and their leather belts. Oliver waited till the island was nearly covered, then hurried down stream and took up a position on a point where the river made a bend, and stood ready to render assistance— praying the while that the log would swerve inshore.
Presently he saw them coming—Jones stretched out but firmly lashed on; Sullivan, stripped to the waist, sat astride, swaying from side to side in his efforts to keep the rolling thing balanced, and maintaining his place by holding on to something which girdled it. Fairly in mid-stream, the log held its course. Oliver could do nothing—what could be done? If it had only run into the eddy there was a chance, but things were not ordered so. Sullivan saw him as they swept past. With a smile on his face, he waved his hand in farewell, shouting ‘Good-bye, old chap. We’re bound—’ The remainder was lost. There was another rapid ahead, and Oliver watched them to their doom. He saw the log roll over, as, with a sudden shoot, the resistless waters tossed it onward. He saw it a second or two later with but one figure on it—him who was tied.
At the river’s mouth the workers securing the logs as they arrived were horrified to find one bearing a ghastly, battered burden. Sullivan’s plan had miscarried, and his last resource was transformed into a hearse for Jones. Sullivan was denied the poor privilege of ‘decent burial’, as he was seen no more. The river kept its secret.