It might hold on there indefinitely, or it might get loose at any moment, swing wide open, and set free the imprisoned wealth of logs behind it.

As it was, they were beginning to slip through the narrow opening, and those that had attracted Winn's attention were sliding downstream as stealthily as so many escaped convicts.
The boy's first impulse was to run towards the house, calling his father and the mill-hands as he went.

His second, and the one upon which he acted, was to mend the broken boom and capture the truant logs himself.

"There is no need of troubling father, and I can do it alone better than any number of those clumsy mill-hands," he thought.
"Besides, there is no time to spare; for if the boom once lets go of that snag, we shall lose half the logs behind it." Thus thinking, Winn ran around the mill and sprang aboard the raft that lay just below it.

Glancing about for a stout rope, his eye lighted on the line by which the raft was made fast to a tree.