Caleb West, Master Diver Part 3

Breakfast over, Captain Joe was the first man on deck. He had left his pea-jacket in the cabin, and now wore his every-day outfit-the blue flannel shirt, long since stretched out of shape in its efforts to accommodate itself to the spread of his shoulders, and a pair of trousers in which each corrugated wrinkle outlined a knotted muscle twisted up and down a pair of legs st.u.r.dy as rudder-posts.

"Come, men!" he called in a commanding voice, with none of the gentler tones heard at the breakfast-table. "Pull yourselves together.... Bill Lacey, lower away that hook and git them chains ready.... Fire up, Cap'n Brandt, and give 'er every pound o' steam she'll carry....

Here,-one or two of ye, run this 'ere line ash.o.r.e and make her bow fast.... Drop that divin'-suit, Caleb; this ain't no time to patch things."

These orders were volleyed at the men as he stepped from the sloop to the wharf, each man springing to his place with an alacrity seldom seen among men of other crews. Close a.s.sociation with Captain Joe always inspired a peculiar confidence and loyalty not only among his own men, but in all the others who heard his voice. His personal magnetism, his enthusiasm, his seeming reckless fearlessness, and yet extreme caution and watchful care for the safety of his men, had created among his employees a blind confidence in his judgment that always resulted in immediate and unquestioned obedience to his orders, no matter what the risk might seem.

The sloop was now lying alongside the wharf, with beam and stern lines made fast to the outlying water-spiles to steady her. When the tackle was shaken clear, the boom was lowered at the proper angle; the heavy chain terminating in an enormous S-hook, which hung directly over the centre of one of the big enrockment blocks.

Captain Joe moved down the dock and adjusted with his own hands the steel "Lewis" that was to be driven into the big trial stone.

Important details he never left to others. If this Lewis should slip, with the stone suspended over the sloop's deck, the huge block would crush through her timbers, sinking her instantly.

The Screamer's captain was at the throttle, watching the steadily rising steam-gauge.

"Give 'er a turn and take up the slack!" shouted Captain Joe.

"Ay, ay, sir!" answered the skipper quickly, as the cogs of the hoisting-engine began to move, winding all the loose slackened "fall"

around the drum, until it straightened out like a telegraph wire.

"What's she carryin' now, Cap'n Bob?" again shouted Captain Joe.

"Seventy-six pounds, sir."

"Give 'er time-don't push 'er."

A crowd began to gather on the dock: fishermen and workmen on their way to the village, idlers along the sh.o.r.e road, and others. They all understood that the trial of the sloop was to be made this morning, and great interest was felt. The huge stones had rested all winter on this wharf, and had been discussed and rediscussed until each one outweighed the Pyramids. Loading such pieces on board a vessel like the Screamer had never been done in Keyport before.

Old Marrows whispered certain misgivings, as he made fast a line far up on the wharf. Some of the listeners moved back across the road, yielding to the vague fear of the inexperienced. Bets were offered that "her mast would be tore clean out of her;" or that "she'd put her starboard rail under water afore she'd start 'em;" and that "she'd sink where she lay."

The needle of the gauge on the sloop's boiler revolved slowly until it registered ninety pounds. Little puffs of blue vaporless steam hissed from the safety-valve. The boiler was getting ready to do its duty.

Captain Joe looked aloft, ordered the boom topped a few inches, so that the lift would be plumb, sprang upon the sloop's deck, scrutinized the steam-gauge, saw that the rope was evenly wound on the drum, emptied an oil-can into the sunken wooden saddle in which the b.u.t.t of the boom rested, followed with his eye every foot of the manilla fall from the drum through the double blocks to the chain hanging over the big stone, called to the people on the dock to get out of harm's way, saw that every man was in his place, and shouted the order, clear and sharp,-

"Go ahead!"

The cogs of the drum of the hoisting-engine spun around until the great weight began to tell; then the strokes of the steam-pistons slowed down. The outboard mooring-lines were now tight as standing rigging. The b.u.t.t of the boom in the sunken saddle was creaking as it turned, a pungent odor from the friction-heated oil filling the air.

The strain increased, and the sloop careened toward the wharf until her bilge struck the water, drawing taut as bars of steel her outboard shrouds. Ominous clicks came from the new manilla as its twists were straightened out.

Captain Bob Brandt still stood by the throttle, one of his crew firing,-sometimes with refuse cotton waste soaked in kerosene. He was watching every part of his sloop then under strain to see how she stood the test.

The slow movement of the pistons continued.

The strain on the outboard shroud became intense. A dead silence prevailed, broken only by the clicking fall and the creak of the roller blocks.

Twice the safety-valve blew a hoa.r.s.e note of warning.

Slowly, inch by inch, the sloop settled in the water, stopped suddenly, and quivered her entire length. Another turn of the drum on her deck and the huge stone canted a point, slid the width of a dock plank, and with a hoa.r.s.e, sc.r.a.ping sound turned half round and swung clear of the wharf!

A cheer went up from the motley crowd on the dock.

Not a word escaped the men at work. The worst was yet to come.

The swinging stone must yet be lowered on deck.

"Tighten up that guy," said Captain Joe quietly, between his teeth, never taking his eyes from the stone; his hand meanwhile on the fall, to test its strain.

Bill Lacey and Caleb ran to the end of the dock, whipped one end of a line around a mooring-post, and with their knees bent to the ground held on with all their strength. The other end of the guy was fastened to the steel S-hook that held the Lewis now securely in the stone.

"Easy-ea-s-y!" said Captain Joe, a momentary shadow of anxiety on his face. The guy held by Caleb and Lacey gradually slackened. The great stone, now free to swing clear, moved slowly in mid-air over the edge of the wharf, pa.s.sed above the water, cleared the rail of the sloop, and settled on her deck as gently as a grounding balloon.

The cheer that broke from all hands brought the fishwives to their porches.

CHAPTER IV

AMONG THE BLACKFISH AND TOMCODS

Hardly had the men ceased cheering when the boom was swung back, another huge stone was lifted from the wharf, and loaded aboard the sloop. A third followed, was lowered upon rollers on the deck and warped amidships, to trim the boat. The mooring-lines were cast off, and the sloop's sail partly hoisted for better steering, and a nervous, sputtering little tug tightened a tow-line over the Screamer's bow.

The flotilla now moved slowly out of the harbor toward the Ledge.

Captain Brandt stood at the wheel. His face was radiant. His boat had met the test, just as he knew she would. She had stood by him too many times before for him to doubt her now.

There had been one night at Rockport when she lay till morning, bow on to a gale, within a cable's length of the breakwater. This saw-toothed ledge, with the new floating buoys of Captain Joe's, could not frighten him after that.

Yet not a word of boasting pa.s.sed his lips. He spun his wheel and held his peace.

When the open harbor was reached, the men overhauled the boom-tackle, getting ready for the real work of the day. Bill Lacey and Caleb West lifted the air-pump from its case, and oiled the plunger. Caleb was to dive that day himself,-work like this required an experienced hand,-and find a bed for these first three stones as they were lowered under water. Lacey was to tend the life-line.

As the tug and sloop pa.s.sed into the broad water, Medford Village could be seen toward the southeast. Sanford adjusted his marine-gla.s.s, and focused its lens on Mrs. Leroy's country-house. It lay near the water, and was surmounted by a cupola he had often occupied as a lookout when he had been Mrs. Leroy's guest, and the weather had been too rough for him to land at the Ledge. He saw that the bricklayers were really at work, and that the dining-room extension was already well under way, the scaffolding being above the roof. He meant, if the weather permitted, to stop there on his way home.

Soon the Ledge itself loomed up. The concrete men were evidently busy, for the white steam from the mixers rose straight into the still air.

An hour more and the windows on the lee side of the shanty could be distinguished, and a little later, the men on the platform as they gathered to await the approaching flotilla. When they caught sight of the big blocks stored on the Screamer's deck, they broke into a cheer that was followed by a shrill saluting whistle from the big hoisting-engine on the Ledge, answered as cheerily by the approaching tug. Work on the Ledge could now begin in earnest.

If Crotch Island was like the back of a motionless whale, Shark's Ledge was like that of a turtle,-a turtle say one hundred and fifty feet long by a hundred wide, lying in a moving sea, and always fringed by a ruffling of surf curls, or swept by great waves that rolled in from Montauk. No landing could ever be made here except in the eddy formed by the turtle itself, and then only in the stillest weather.

The sh.e.l.l of this rock-incrusted turtle had been formed by dumping on the original Ledge, and completely covering it, thousands of tons of rough stone, each piece as big as a cart-body. Upon this stony sh.e.l.l, which rose above high-water mark, a wooden platform had been erected for the proper storage of gravel, sand, barrels of cement, hoisting-engines, concrete mixers, tools, and a shanty for the men. It was down by the turtle's side-down below the slop of the surf-that the big enrockment blocks were to be placed, one on the other, their sides touching close as those on a street pavement. The lowest stone of all was to be laid on the bottom of the sea in thirty feet of water; the top one was to be placed where its upper edges would be thrust above its splash. In this way the loose rough stones of the turtle's sh.e.l.l would have an even covering and the finished structure be protected from the crush of floating ice and the fury of winter gales.

By a change of plan the year before, a deep hole nearly sixty feet in diameter had been made in the back of this turtle by lifting out these rough stones. This hole was now being filled with concrete up to low-water level and retained in form by circular iron bands. On top of this enormous artificial bedstone was to be placed the tower of the lighthouse itself, constructed of dressed stone, many of the single pieces to be larger than those now on the Screamer's deck. The four great derrick-masts with "twenty-inch b.u.t.ts" which had been ordered by telegraph the day before in Sanford's office were to be used to place these dressed stones in position.

The situation was more than usually exposed. The nearest land to the Ledge was Crotch Island, two miles away, while to the east stretched the wide sea, hungry for fresh victims, and losing no chance to worst the men on the Ledge. For two years it had fought the captain and his men without avail. The Old Man of the Sea hates the warning voice of the fog-horn and the cheery light in the tall tower-they rob him of his prey.

The tug continued on her course for half a mile, steered closer, the sloop following, and gained the eddy of the Ledge out of the racing tide. Four men from the platform now sprang into a whaleboat and pulled out to meet the sloop, carrying one end of a heavy hawser which was being paid out by the men on the Ledge. The hawser was made fast to the sloop's cleats and hauled tight. The tug was cast loose and sent back to Keyport. Outboard hawsers were run by the crew of the whaleboat to the floating anchor-buoys, to keep the sloop off the stone-pile when the enrockment blocks were being swung clear of her sides.

Caleb and Lacey began at once to overhaul the diving-gear. The air-pump was set close to the sloop's rail; and a short ladder was lashed to her side, to enable the diver to reach the water easily. The air-hose and life-lines were then uncoiled.