Caleb West, Master Diver Part 2

Sam watched them over the balcony until they crossed the square, cut a double shuffle with both feet, admired his black grinning face in the mirror, took a corncob pipe from the shelf in the pantry, filled it with some of Sanford's best tobacco, and began packing his master's bag for the night train to Keyport.

CHAPTER III

CAPTAIN BRANDT AT THE THROTTLE

The sun was an hour high when Sanford arrived at Keyport and turned quickly toward the road leading from the station to Captain Joe's cottage, a spring and lightness in his step which indicated not only robust health, but an eagerness to reach at once the work absorbing his mind. When he gained the high ground overlooking the cottage and dock, he paused for a view that always charmed him with its play of light and color over sea and sh.o.r.e, and which seemed never so beautiful as in the early morning light.

Below him lay Keyport Village, built about a rocky half-moon of a harbor, its old wharves piled high with rotting oil-barrels and flanked by empty warehouses, behind which crouched low, gray-roofed cabins, squatting in a tangle of streets, with here and there a white church spire tipped with a restless weather-vane. Higher, on the hills, were nestled some old homesteads with sloping roofs and wide porches, and away up on the crest of the heights, overlooking the sea, stood the more costly structures with well-shaved lawns spotted with homesick trees from a warmer clime, their arms stretched appealingly toward the sea.

At his feet lay the br.i.m.m.i.n.g harbor itself, dotted with motionless yachts and various fishing-craft, all reflected upside down in the still sea, its gla.s.sy surface rippled now and then by the dipping buckets of men washing down the decks, or by the quick water-spider strokes of some lobster-fisherman,-the click of the row-locks pulsating in the breathless morning air.

On the near point of the half-moon stood Keyport Light,-an old-fashioned factory chimney of a Light,-built of brick, but painted snow-white with a black cigar band around its middle, its top surmounted by a copper lantern. This flashed red and white at night, over a radius of twenty miles. Braced up against its base, for a better hold, was a little building hiding a great fog-horn, which on thick days and nights bellowed out its welcome to Keyport's best.

On the far point of the moon-the one opposite the Light, and some two miles away-stretched sea-meadows broken with clumps of rock and shelter-houses for cattle, and between these two points, almost athwart the mouth of the harbor, like a huge motionless whale lay Crotch Island, its backbone knotted with summer cottages. Beyond the island away out under the white glare of the risen sun could be seen a speck of purplish-gray fringed with bright splashes of spray glinting in the dazzling light. This was Shark's Ledge.

As Sanford looked toward the site of the new Light a strange sensation came over him. There lay the work on which his reputation would rest and by which he would hereafter be judged. Everything else he had so far accomplished was, he knew, but a preparation for this his greatest undertaking. Not only were the engineering problems involved new to his experience, but in his att.i.tude in regard to them he had gone against all precedents as well as against the judgments of older heads, and had relied almost exclusively upon Captain Joe's personal skill and pluck. While it was true that he never doubted his ultimate success, there always came a tugging at his heartstrings and a tightening of his throat whenever he looked toward the site of the lighthouse.

Turning from the scene with a long drawn breath, he walked with slackened step down the slope that led to the long dock fronting the captain's cottage. As he drew nearer he saw that the Screamer had been moored between the captain's dock (always lumbered with paraphernalia required for sea-work) and the great granite-wharf, which was piled high with enormous cubes of stone, each as big as two pianos.

On her forward deck was bolted a hoisting-engine, and thrust up through the hatch of the forecastle was the smoke-stack of the boiler, already puffing trial feathers of white steam into the morning air.

She had, too, the heavy boom and stout mast used as a derrick. Captain Joe had evidently seen no reason to change his mind about her, for he was at the moment on her after-deck, overhauling a heavy coil of manilla rope, and reeving it in the block himself, the men standing by to catch the end of the line.

When Sanford joined the group there was no general touching of hats,-outward sign of deference that a group of laborers on land would have paid their employer. In a certain sense, each man here was chief. Each man knew his duty and did it, quietly, effectually, and cheerfully. The day's work had no limit of hours. The pay was never fixed by a board of delegates, one half of whom could not tell a marlinespike from a monkey-wrench. These men had enlisted for a war with winds and storms and changing seas, and victory meant something more to them than pay once a month and plum duff once a week. It meant hours of battling with the sea, of tugging at the lines, waist-deep in the boiling surf that rolled in from Montauk. It meant constant, unceasing vigilance day and night, in order that some exposed site necessary for a bedstone might be captured and held before a southeaster could wreck it, and thus a vantage-point be lost in the laying of the masonry.

Each man took his share of wet and cold and exposure without grumbling. When, by some accident, a cowardly and selfish spirit joined the force, Captain Joe, on the first word of complaint, handed the man his money and put him ash.o.r.e. The severity of the work was never resented. It was only against their common enemies, the winds and the seas, that murmurs were heard. "Drat that wind!" one would say. "Here she's a-haulin' to the east'rd agin, an' we ain't got them j'ints [in the masonry] p'inted." Or, "It makes a man sick to see th'

way this month's been a-goin' on,-not a decent clay since las'

Tuesday."

Sanford liked these men. He was always at home with them. He loved their courage, their grit, their loyalty to one another and to the work itself. The absence of ceremony among them never offended him.

His cheery "Good-morning" as he stepped aboard was as cheerily answered, but no other demonstration took place.

Captain Joe stopped work only long enough to shake Sanford's hand and to present him to the newcomer, Captain Bob Brandt of the Screamer.

"Cap'n Bob!" he called, waving his hand.

"Ay, ay, sir!" came the ready response of his early training.

"Come aft, sir. Mr. Sanford wants ye." The "sir" was merely a recognition of the captain's rank.

A tall, straight, blue-eyed young fellow of twenty-two, with a face like an open book, walked down the deck,-one of those perfectly simple, absolutely fearless, alert men found so often on the New England coast, with legs and arms of steel, body of hickory, and hands of whalebone: cabin-boy at twelve, common sailor at sixteen, first mate at twenty, and full captain the year he voted.

Sanford looked him all over, from his shoes to his cap. He knew a round full man when he saw him. This one seemed to be without a flaw.

Sanford saw too that he possessed that yeast of good nature without which the best of men are heavy and dull.

"Can you lift these blocks, Captain Brandt?" he asked in a hearty tone, more like that of a comrade than an employer, his hand extended in greeting.

"Well, I can try, sir," came the modest reply, the young man's face lighting up as he looked into Sanford's eyes, where he read with equal quickness a ready appreciation, so encouraging to every man who intends to do his best.

Captain Brandt and every member of the gang knew that it was not the mere weight of these enrockment blocks which made the handling of them so serious a matter; twelve tons is a light lift for many boat-derricks. It was the fact that they must be loaded aboard a vessel not only small enough to be easily handled in any reasonable weather, but with a water-draught shoal enough to permit her lying safely in a running tide alongside the Ledge while the individual blocks were being lowered over her side.

The hangers-on about the dock questioned whether any sloop could do this work. All winter, in fact, they had discussed it about the tavern stoves.

"Billy," said old Marrows, an a.s.sumed authority on stone-sloops, but not in Sanford's employ, although a constant applicant, "I ain't sayin' nothin' agin her beam, mind, but she's too peaked forrud.

'Nother thing, when she's got them stones slung, them chain-plates won't hold 'er shrouds. I wouldn't be s'prised to see that mast jerked clean out'er her."

Bill Lacey, the handsome young rigger to whom the remark was addressed, leaned over the sloop's rail, scanned every bolt in her plates, glanced up at the standing rigging, tried it with his hand as if it were a tight-rope, and with a satisfied air answered, "Them plates is all right, Marrows,-it's her b'iler that's a-worryin' me.

What do you say, Caleb?" turning to Caleb West, a broad-shouldered, grizzled man in a sou'wester, who was mending a leak in a diving-dress, the odor of the burning cement in a pan beside him mingling with the savory smell of frying pork coming up from the galley.

"Wall, I ain't said, Billy," replied Caleb in a cheery voice, stroking his bushy gray beard. "Them as don't know better keep shet."

There was a loud laugh at the young rigger's expense, in which everybody except Lacey and Caleb joined. Lacey's face hardened under the thrust, while Caleb still smiled, a quaint expression overspreading his features,-one that often came when something pleased him, and which by its sweetness showed how little venom lay behind his reproofs.

"These 'ere sloops is jes' like women," said George Nickles, the cook, a big, oily man, with his sleeves rolled up above his elbows, a greasy ap.r.o.n about his waist. He was dipping a bucket overboard. "Ye can't tell nothin' about 'em till ye tries 'em."

The application of the simile not being immediately apparent,-few of Nickles' similes ever were,-n.o.body answered. Lacey stole a look at Nickles and then at Caleb, to see if the shot had been meant for him, and meeting the diver's unconscious clear blue eyes, looked seaward again.

Lonny Bowles, a big derrickman from Noank quarries, in a red shirt, discolored on the back with a pink Y where his suspenders had crossed, now moved nearer and joined in the discussion.

"She kin h'ist any two on 'em, an' never wet 'er deck combin's. I seen these Cape Ann sloops afore, when we wuz buildin' Stonin'ton breakwater. Ye wouldn't believe they had it in 'em till ye see 'em work. Her b'iler's all right."

"Don't you like the sloop, Caleb?" said Sanford, who had been listening. "Don't you think she'll do her work?" he continued, moving a rebellious leg of the rubber dress to sit the closer.

"Well, of course, sir, I ain't knowed 'er long 'nough to swear by yit.

She's fittin' for loadin' 'em on land, maybe, but she may have some trouble gittin' rid of 'em at the Ledge. Her b'iler looks kind o' weak to me," and the master diver bent over the pan, stirring the boiling cement with his sheath-knife, the rubber suit sprawled out over his knees, the awkward, stiff, empty legs and arms of the dress flopping about as he patched its many leaks. Then he added with a quaint smile, "But if Cap'n Joe says she's all right, ye can pin to her."

Sanford moved a little closer to Caleb, holding the pan of cement for him, and watching him at work. He had known him for years as a fearless diver of marvelous pluck and endurance; one capable of working seven consecutive hours under water. When an English bark had run on top of Big Spindle Reef and backed off into one hundred and ten feet of water, the captain and six of the crew were saved, but the captain's wife, helpless in the cabin, had been drowned. Caleb had gone below, cleared away the broken deck that pinned her down, and had brought her body up in his arms. His helmet was spattered inside with the blood that trickled from his ears, owing to the enormous pressure of the sea. This had been not a twelvemonth since.

The constant facing of dangers had made of the diver a quiet, reticent man. There was, too, a gentleness and restful patience about him that always appealed to Sanford, and next to Captain Joe he was the one man on the working force whom he trusted most. Of late his pale blue eyes had shone with a softer light, as if he were perpetually hugging some happiness to himself. Those who knew him best said that all this happy gentleness had come with the girl wife. Since he had entered Sanford's employment he had married a second and a younger wife,-a mere child, the men said, young enough to be his daughter, too young for a man of forty-five.

And yet Caleb was not an old man, if the possession of vigor and energy meant anything. His cheeks had the rosy hue of perfect health, and his step was lighter and more agile than that of many men half his years. Only his beard was gray. Yet he was called by his shipmates old, for in the hard working world in which he lived none but the earlier years of a man's life counted as youth.

His cabin, a small, two-story affair, bought with the money he had saved during his fifteen years on the Lightship and after his first wife's death, lay a short distance up the sh.o.r.e above that of Captain Joe, and in plain sight of the Screamer.

When Caleb rose to wash his hands, he caught sight of a blue ap.r.o.n tossing on its distant porch. Bill Lacey saw the ap.r.o.n too, and had answered it a moment later with a little wave of his own. Caleb did not notice Billy's signal, but Captain Joe did, and a peculiar look filled his eye that the men did not often see. In his confusion Lacey flushed scarlet, and upset the pan of cement.

When Nickles announced breakfast, Captain Joe soused a bucket overboard, rested it on the rail and plunged in his hands, the splashing drops glistening in the sunlight, and called out:-

"Come, Mr. Sanford,-breakfast's ready, men." Then, waving his hand to Caleb and the others who had been discussing the Screamer, he said, laughing, "All you men what's gittin' skeery 'bout this sloop kin step ash.o.r.e. I'm a-goin' to load three o' them stone aboard here after breakfast, if I roll her over bottom side up."

Sanford sat at the head of the table, his back to the companionway, the crew's bunks within reach of his hand. He was the only man who wore a coat. Set out before him were fried eggs sizzling in squares of pork; hashed potatoes, browned in what was left of the sizzle; saleratus biscuit, full of dark spots; and coffee in tin cups. There was also a small jug of mola.s.ses, protected by a pewter top, and there was, too, a bottle of tomato catsup, whose contents were indiscriminately spattered over every plate.

Long years of a.s.sociation had familiarized Sanford with certain rules of etiquette to be observed at a meal like this. Whoever finished first, he knew, must push back his stool out of the way and instantly mount to the deck. In confined quarters, elbow-room is a luxury, and its free gift a courtesy. He also knew that to leave anything on his plate would have been regarded as an evidence of extreme bad manners, suggesting moreover a reflection upon the skill of the cook. It was also a part of the code to wipe one's knife carefully on the last piece of bread, which was to be swallowed immediately, thus obliterating all traces of the repast, except, of course, the bones, which must be picked clean and piled on one side of the plate. Captain Joe himself never neglected any of these little amenities.

Sanford forgot none of them. He wiped his knife and cleared his plate as carefully as any of his men. He drank from his tin cup, and ate his eggs and fried pork too with the same zest that he would have felt before one of Sam's choicest breakfasts. He really enjoyed these repasts. To him there was something wonderfully inspiring in watching a group of big, strong, broad-breasted, h.o.r.n.y-handed laboring men intent on satisfying a hunger born of fresh air and hard work. There was an eagerness about their movements, a relish as each mouthful disappeared, attended by a good humor and sound digestion that would have given a sallow-faced dyspeptic a new view of life, and gone far toward converting a dilettante to the belief that although forks and napkins were perhaps indispensable luxuries, existence might not be wholly desolate with plain fingers and shirt-cuffs.