Caleb West, Master Diver Part 28

Sanford made a rush for the staircase, a rash, unreasonable impulse to help taking possession of him. The keeper caught him firmly by the arm.

"Come back, sir! You're only wastin' yer breath. That smack'll get 'em."

Captain Brandt picked up the gla.s.s that the keeper had dropped. His hands shook so he could hardly adjust the lens.

"The boom's broke," he said in a trembling voice; "that's what ails 'em. She's bottom side up. Lord, if she ain't a-wallowin'! I never 'spected to see Cap'n Joe in a hole like that. They're all three in th' water; ain't a man livin' can swim ash.o.r.e in that sea! Why don't that blamed smack go about? They'll sink 'fore she can get to 'em.

Where's the cap'n? He ain't come up yet. There's Lonny and Caleb, but I don't see Cap'n Joe nowhere."

Sanford leaned against the bra.s.s rail of the great lens, his eyes on the fishing-smack swooping down to the rescue. The helplessness of his position, his absolute inability to help the drowning men, overwhelmed him: Captain Joe and Caleb perishing before his eyes, and he powerless to lift a hand.

"Do you see the captain anywhere?" he asked, with an effort at self-control. The words seemed to clog his throat.

"Not yet, sir, but there's Lonny, and there's Caleb. You look, Mr.

Marvin," he said, turning to the keeper. He could not trust himself any longer. For the first time his faith in Captain Joe had failed him.

Marvin held the gla.s.s to his eye and covered the boat. He hardly dared breathe.

"Can't see but two, sir." His voice was broken and husky. "Can't make out the cap'n nowheres. Something must 'a' struck him an' stunned him.

My-my-ain't it a shame for him to cut up a caper like this! I allers told Cap'n Joe he'd get hurted in some foolish kick-up. Why in h.e.l.l don't them other fellers do something? If they don't look out, the Dolly'll drift so far they'll lose him,-standin' there like two dummies an' lettin' a man drown! Lord! Lord! ain't it too bad!" The keeper's eyes filled. Everything was dim before him.

The skipper sank on the oil-chest and bowed his head. Sanford's hands were over his face. If the end had come, he did not want to see it.

The small, close lantern became as silent as a death-chamber. The keeper, his back against the lens rail, folded his arms across his chest and stared out to sea. His face bore the look of one watching a dying man. Sanford did not move. His thoughts were on Aunty Bell. What should he say to her? Was there not something he could have done?

Should he not, after all, have hailed the first tug in the harbor and gone in search of them before it was too late?

The seconds dragged. The silence in its intensity became unbearable.

With a deep indrawn sigh, Captain Brandt turned toward Sanford and touched him. "Come away," he said, with the tenderness of one strong man who suffers and is stirred with greater sorrow by another's grief.

"This ain't no place for you, Mr. Sanford. Come away."

Sanford raised his eyes and was about to speak, when the keeper threw up his arms with a joyous shout and seized the gla.s.s. "There he is! I see his cap! That's Cap'n Joe! He's holdin' up his hands. Caleb's crawlin' along the bottom; he's reachin' down an' haulin' Cap'n Joe up. Now he's on 'er keel."

Sanford and Captain Brandt sprang to their feet, crowding close to the lantern gla.s.s, their eyes fastened on the Dolly. Sanford's hands were trembling. Hot, quick tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped from his chin. The joyful news had unnerved him more than the horror of the previous moments. There was no doubt of its truth; he could see, even with the naked eye, the captain lying flat on the boat's keel. He thought he could follow every line of his body,-never so precious as now.

"He's all right," he said in a dazed way-"all right-all right,"

repeating it mechanically over and over to himself, as a child would do. Then he turned and laid his hand on the keeper's shoulder.

"Thank G.o.d, Tony! Thank G.o.d!"

The keeper's hand closed tight in Sanford's. For a moment he did not speak.

"Almighty close shave, sir," he said slowly in a broken whisper, looking into Sanford's eyes.

Captain Brandt's face was radiant. "Might 'a' knowed he'd come up some'ers, sir. Didn't I tell ye, ye couldn't drown him? But where in thunder has he been under water all this time?" he asked, with a laugh that had the unshed tears of a strong man in it, and the exultation of one just recovered from a fright that had almost unnerved him. The laugh not only expressed his joy at the great relief, but carried with it a reminder that he had never seriously doubted the captain's ability to save himself.

All eyes were now fastened on the rescuing smack. As she swept past the capsized boat, her crew leaned far over the side, reached down and caught two of the shipwrecked men, leaving one man still clinging to the keel, the sea breaking over him every moment. Sanford took the gla.s.s, and saw that this man was Lonny Bowles, and that Captain Joe, now safe aboard the smack, was waving his cap to the second smack, which hove to in answer. Presently the hailed smack rounded in, lowered her mainsail, and hauled Lonny aboard. She then took the overturned Dolly in tow, and made at once for the harbor. When this was done, the first smack, with Captain Joe and Caleb on board, shook a reef from its mainsail, turned about, and despite the storm laid a straight course back to the Ledge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Thank G.o.d, Tony! Thank G.o.d!"]

This daring and apparently hopeless attempt of Captain Joe to carry out his plan of going to the Ledge awoke a new anxiety in Sanford.

There was no longer the question of personal danger to the captain or the men; the fishing-smack was, of course, a better sea boat than the Dolly, but why make the trip at all when the pump had been lost from the overturned boat, and no one could land at the Ledge? Even from where they all stood in the lantern they could see the big rollers flash white as they broke over the enrockment blocks, the spray drenching the tops of the derricks. No small boat could live in such a sea,-not even the life-boat at the Ledge.

As the incoming smack drew near, Sanford, followed by the keeper and Captain Brandt, hurried down the spiral staircase and into the keeper's room below, where they drew on their coats and heavy boots, and made their way to the lighthouse dock.

When she came within hailing distance, Captain Brandt mounted a spile and shouted above the roar of the gale, "Bowles, ahoy! Anybody hurt, Lonny?"

A man in a red shirt detached himself from among the group of men huddled in the smack's bow, stepped on the rail, and, putting his hands to his mouth, trumpeted back, "No!"

"What's the cap'n gone to the Ledge for?"

"Gone to set the pump!"

"Thought the pump was lost overboard!" cried Sanford.

"No, sir; cap'n dived under the Dolly an' found it catched fast, an'

Caleb hauled it aboard. Cap'n tol' me to tell ye that he'd hev it set all right to-day, blow or no"-The last words were lost in the wind.

"Ain't that jes' like the cap'n?" shouted the keeper, with a loud laugh, slapping his thigh with his hand. "That's where he was when we thought he was drownded,-he was a-divin' fer that pump. Land o'

Moses, ain't he a good un!"

Captain Brandt said nothing, but a smile of happy pride overspread his face. Captain Joe was still his hero.

Sanford spent the afternoon between Aunty Bell's kitchen and the paraphernalia dock, straining his eyes seaward in search of an incoming smack which would bring the captain. The wind had shifted to the northwest, sweeping out the fog and piling the low clouds in heaps. The rain had ceased, and a dash of pale lemon light shone above the blue-gray sea.

About sundown his quick eye detected a tiny sail creeping in behind Crotch Island. As it neared the harbor and he made out the lines of the fishing-smack of the morning, a warm glow tingled through him; it would not be long now before he had his hands on Captain Joe.

When the smack came bowling into the harbor under double reefs, her wind-blown jib a cup, her sail a saucer, and rounded in as graceful as a skater on the outer edge, Sanford's hand was the first that touched the captain's as he sprang from the smack's deck to the dock.

"Captain Joe," he said. His voice broke as he spoke; all his love was in his eyes. "Don't ever do that again. I saw it all from the lighthouse lantern. You have no right to risk your life this way."

"'T ain't nothin', Mr. Sanford." His great hand closed tight over that of the young engineer. "It's all right now, and the pump's screwed fast. Caleb had steam up on the h'ister when I left him on the Ledge.

Boom on the Dolly hadn't 'a' broke short off out there, we'd 'a' been there sooner."

"We thought you were gone, once," continued Sanford, his voice full of anxiety, still holding to the captain's hand as they walked toward the house.

"Not in the Dolly, sir," the captain answered in an apologetic tone, as if he wanted to atone for the suffering he had caused his friend.

"She's got wood enough in 'er to float anywheres. That's what I took 'er out for."

Aunty Bell met them at the kitchen door.

"I hearn ye was overboard," she said quietly, no more stirred over the day's experience than if some child had stepped into a puddle and had come in for a change of shoes. "Ye're wet yet, be n't ye?" patting his big chest to make sure.

"Yes, guess so," he answered carelessly, feeling his own arms as if to satisfy himself as to the reason of his wife's inquiry. "Got a dry shirt?"

"Yes; got everything hangin' there on a chair 'fore the kitchen fire,"

and she closed the door upon him and Sanford.

"Beats all, Mr. Sanford, don't it?" the captain continued in short sentences, broken by breathless pauses, as he stripped off his wet clothes before the blazing fire, one jerk for the suspenders, another for the trousers, Sanford, jubilant over the captain's safety and eager to do him any service, handing him the dry garments one after another.