Caleb West, Master Diver Part 12

Shaking his head like a big water-dog, he waved his hand, with a laugh, to Sanford, volleyed out another rattling fire of orders, and then held on with the clutch of a devil-fish as the next green roller raced over him. It made no more impression upon him than if he had been an offsh.o.r.e buoy.

The fight now lay between the rising sea and the men tugging at the watch-tackle. After each wave ran by the men gained an inch on the tightening line. Every moment the wind blew harder, and every moment the sea rose higher. Bowles was twice washed from the rock on which he stood, and the newcomer, who was unused to the slime and ooze, had been thrown bodily into a water-hole. Sanford held to a rock a few feet above Captain Joe, watching his every movement. His anxiety for the safe erection of the system had been forgotten in his admiration for the superb pluck and masterful skill of the surf-drenched sea-t.i.tan below him.

Captain Joe now moved to the edge of the anchor enrockment block, standing waist-deep in the sea, one hand holding the hook, the other the ring. Six inches more and the closure would be complete.

In heavy strains like these the last six inches gain slowly.

"Give it to 'er, men-all hands now-give it to 'er! Pull, Caleb!

Pull, you -- --!" (Air full of Greek fire.) "Once more-all together -- --!" (Sky-bombs bursting.) "All to-"

Again the sea buried him out of sight, quenching the explosives struggling to escape from his throat.

The wind and tide increased. The water swirled about the men, the spray flew over their heads, but the steady pull went on.

A voice from the platform now called out,-it was that of Nickles, the cook: "Life-boat's a-poundin' bad, sir! She can't stan' it much longer."

Carleton's voice shouting to Sanford from the platform came next: "I'm not going to stay here all night and get wet. I'm going to Keyport in the Screamer. Send some men to catch this life-boat."

The captain raised his head and looked at Nickles; Carleton he never saw.

"Let 'r pound an' be d.a.m.ned to 'er! Go on, Caleb, with that tackle.

Pull, ye"-Another wave went over him, and another red-hot explosive lost its life.

With the breaking of the next roller the captain uttered no sound. The situation was too grave for explosives. Whenever his profanity stopped short the men grew nervous: they knew then that a crisis had arrived, one that even Captain Joe feared.

The captain bent over the chain, one arm clinging to the anchorage, his feet braced against a rock, the hook in his hand within an inch of the ring.

"_Hold hard!_" he shouted.

Caleb raised his hand in warning, and the rhythmic movement ceased.

The men stood still. Every eye was fixed on the captain.

"LET GO!"

The big derrick quivered for an instant as the line slackened, stood still, and a slight shiver ran through the guys. The hook had slipped into the ring!

The system of four derricks, with all their guys and chains, stood as taut and firm as a suspension bridge!

Captain Joe turned his head calmly towards the platform, and said quietly, "There, Mr. Carleton, they'll stand now till h.e.l.l freezes over."

As the cheering of the men subsided, the captain, squeezing the water from his hair and beard with a quick rasp of his fingers, sprang to Sanford's rock, grasped his outstretched hand, shook it heartily, and called to Caleb, in a firm, cheery voice that had not a trace of fatigue in it after twelve hours of battling with sea and derricks, "All o' you men what's goin' in the Screamer with Mr. Carleton to Keyport for Sunday 'd better look out for that life-boat. Come, Lonny Bowles, pick up them tackles an' git to the shanty. It'll be awful soapy round here 'fore mornin'."

CHAPTER IX

WHAT THE BUTCHER SAW

Caleb sat on the deck of the Screamer on her homeward run, his face turned toward Keyport Light, beyond which his little cabin lay. His eyes glistened, and there came a choking in his throat as he thought of meeting Betty. He could even feel her hand slipped into his, and could hear the very tones of her cheery welcome, when she met him at the gate and they walked together up the garden path to the porch.

Most of the men who had stood to the watch-tackles in the rolling surf sat beside him on the sloop. Those who were still wet, including Sanford, had gone below into the cabin, out of the cutting wind. Those who, like Caleb, had changed their clothes, sat on the after deck.

Captain Joe, against Sanford's earnest protest, had remained on the Ledge for the night. He wanted, he said, to see how the derricks would stand the coming storm.

It had been a busy month for the diver. Since the explosion he had been almost constantly in his rubber dress, working not only his regular four hours under water,-all that an ordinary man could stand,-but taking another's place for an hour or two when some piece of submarine work at the Ledge required his more skillful eye and hand. He had set some fifty or more of the big enrockment blocks in thirty feet of water, each block being lowered into position by the Screamer's boom, and he had prepared the anchor sockets in which to step the four great derricks. Twice he had been swept from his hold by the racing current, and once his helmet had struck a projecting rock with such force that he was deaf for days. His hands, too, had begun to blister from the salt water and hot sun. Betty, on his last Sunday at home, had split up one of her own little gloves for plasters, and tried to heal his blisters with some salve. But it had not done his bruises much good, he thought, as he probed with his stub of a thumb the deeper cracks in his tough, leathery palms.

Now that the men were convalescent he gloried more and more in his wife's energy and capacity. To relieve a wounded man, serve him night and day, and by skill, tenderness, and self-sacrifice get him once more well and sound and on his legs, able to do a day's work and earn a day's pay,-this, to Caleb, was something to be proud of and to glory in. But for her nursing, he would often say, poor Billy would now be among the tombstones on the hill back of Keyport Light.

Caleb's estimate of Betty's efforts was not exaggerated. Her patient had been the most severely injured, and her task had therefore been longer and more severe. The cut on Lacey's cheek and frontal bone, dividing his eyebrow like a sabre slash, had been deep and ugly and slow to heal; and the bruise on his back had developed into a wound that in its progress had sapped his youthful strength. He had been her patient from the first, and she had never neglected him an hour since the fatal night when she helped the doctor wind his bandages. When on the third day fever set in, she had taken her seat by his bedside until the delirium had pa.s.sed. Mrs. Bell and Miss Peebles, the schoolmistress, had relieved each other in the care of the other wounded men,-all of them, strange to say, were single men, and all of them away from home.

Betty would go to her own cabin for an hour each day, but as soon as her work was done she would pull down the shades, lock the house door, and, with a sunbonnet on her head and some little delicacy in her hand, hurry down the sh.o.r.e road again to the warehouse hospital. This had been the first real responsibility of her life, the first time in which anything had been expected of her apart from the endless cooking of three meals a day, and the washing up and sweeping out that followed.

There were no more lonely hours for her now. A new tenderness, too, had been aroused in her nature because of the helplessness of the boy whose feeble, hot fingers clutched her own. The love which this curly-headed young rigger had once avowed for her when there were strength and ruggedness in every sinew of his body, when his red lips were parted over the white teeth and his eyes shone with pride, had been quite forgotten as she watched by his bed. It was this helplessness of his which was ever present in her mind, his suffering.

She realized that the prostrate young fellow before her was dependent on her for his very life and sustenance, as a child might have been.

It was for her he waited in the morning, refusing to touch his breakfast until she gave it to him,-unable at first, reluctant afterward. It was for her last touch on his pillow that he waited at night before he went to sleep. It was she alone who brought the smiles to his face, or inspired him with a courage he had almost lost when the pain racked him and he thought he might never be able to do a day's work again.

The long confinement had left its mark on Lacey. He was a mere outline of himself the first day he was able to sit in the sunshine at the warehouse door. His hands were white, and his face was bleached. When he gained a little strength, Captain Joe gave him light duties about the wharf, the doctor refusing to let him go to the Ledge. But even after he was walking about, Betty felt him still under her care, and prepared dainty dishes for him. When she took them to him, she saw, with a strange sinking of her heart, that he gained but slowly, and was still weak and ill enough to need a woman's care.

The story of her nursing and of the doctor's constant tribute to her skill was well known, and Caleb, usually so reticent, would talk of it again and again. Most of the men liked to humor his pride in her, for Betty's blithesome, cheery nature made her a favorite wherever she was known.

"I kind'er wish Cap'n Joe had come ash.o.r.e to-night," Caleb said, turning to Captain Brandt, who stood beside him, his hand on the tiller. "He's been soakin' wet all day, an' he won't put nothin' dry on ef I ain't with him. 'T warn't for Betty I'd 'a' stayed, but the little gal's so lonesome 't ain't right to leave her. I don' know what Lacey 'd done but for Betty. Did ye see 'er, Lonny, when she come in that night?" All the little by-paths of Caleb's talk led to Betty.

It was the same old question, but Lonny, seated on the other side of the deck, fell in willingly with Caleb's mood.

"See 'er? Wall, I guess! I thought she'd keel over when the doctor washed Billy's face. He did look ragged, an' no mistake, Caleb; but she held on an' never give in a mite."

Carleton sat close enough to overhear the remark.

"Why shouldn't she?" he sneered, behind his hand, to the man next him.

"Lacey's a blamed sight better looking fellow than what she's got. The girl knows a good thing when she sees it. If it was me, I'd"-

He never finished the sentence. Caleb overheard the remark, and rose from his seat, with an expression in his eyes that could not be misunderstood. Sanford, watching the group through the cabin window, and not knowing the cause of Caleb's sudden anger, said afterwards that the diver looked like an old gray wolf gathering himself for a spring, as he stood over Carleton with hands tightly clinched.

The superintendent made some sort of half apology to Caleb, and the diver took his seat again, but did not forgive him; neither did the older men, who had seen Betty grow up, and who always spoke of her somehow as if she belonged to them.

"T'ain't decent," said Lonny Bowles to Sanford when he had joined him later in the cabin of the Screamer and had repeated Carleton's remark, "for a man to speak agin a woman; such fellers ain't no better 'n rattlesnakes an' ought'er be trompled on, if they is in guv'ment pay."

When the sloop reached Keyport harbor, the men were landed as near as possible to their several homes. Caleb, in his kindly voice, bade good-night to Sanford, to Captain Brandt, to the crew, and to the working gang. To Carleton he said nothing. He would have overlooked and forgotten an affront put upon himself, but never one upon Betty.

"She ain't got n.o.body but an ol' feller like me," he often said to Captain Joe,-"no chillen nor nothin', poor little gal. I got to make it up to her some way."

As he walked up the path he was so engrossed with Carleton's flippant remark, conning it over in his mind to tell Betty,-he knew she did not like him,-that he forgot for the moment that she was not at the garden gate.

He looked up at the house and noticed that the shades were pulled down on the garden side of the house.

"She ain't sick, is she?" he said to himself. "I guess nussin' Lacey's been too much for her. I ought'er knowed she'd break down. 'Pears to me she did look peaked when I bid her good-by las' Monday."