The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers Part 34

"'Better keep away, my man,' the doctor said; 'I won't answer for what will happen to you if you go back.'

"'I ain't no quitter,' was the answer. 'I'm a Boston wharf-rat, I am, an' I stays wid de gang!'

"That doesn't sound like a heroic speech, Eric," said the first lieutenant, "but it looks to me like it's the real stuff."

"It surely is," agreed the boy.

"He went back with a bite of food for all the men below and they worked on steadily. By the way the stuff came up the pipe they must have worked like demons. Every ear was keen for sign or sound of trouble, but the afternoon wore on, the sand came hurtling from the pipe and the caisson sank lower and lower.

"'How much further?' I asked Father, just as the evening was beginning to draw in.

"'Not more than an inch or two,' he said triumphantly. 'I tell you what, I envy those fellows down there. They're real men. I doubt if I'd have the nerve to do it myself.'

"Suddenly there came a m.u.f.fled roar below.

"'There it is!' cried the young scientist, and he made a bolt for the air-lock.

"Father was not more than a second behind him, waiting only to make sure of the point to which the structure had been sunk. The caisson was within three quarters of an inch of the required depth!

"Meantime, down in the caisson, the feared disaster had occurred. The gas had come up with a rush, almost like an explosion. In the green glare of the candles, burning sulphur and hydrogen flames instead of oxygen, the men were staggering, here and there, unable to find the way out.

"Griffin took charge. It was his hand that led every man to the ladder.

Nine men crawled up.

"As the minutes pa.s.sed, the anxiety at the head of the shaft grew intense. No more workers came. Fourteen men had gone down; only nine had returned. There were then five men still unaccounted for. First one rope was dropped without result, then another. This time some groping hand--it proved to be Griffin's--encountered the rope, and found a sufferer. He tied the rope around his comrade and the man was hoisted up. Four times this was done, but the fourth was a huge, powerful Irishman, called Howard. When he was pulled up, entirely unconscious, he stuck fast in the hole and could not be pulled out.

"By an exertion of self-control and endurance, that no one ever has been able to understand, Griffin climbed that ladder into the top where the gases were at their foulest. Though all his comrades had been too far gone for several minutes to move, even to help themselves, he succeeded in pushing and pulling Howard's unconscious body until it pa.s.sed through the hole.

"A hand was stretched down to reach Griffin and bring him to life and safety, when the overwrought system gave way. He loosed his handhold on the ladder and fell.

"A groan went up from those above. It was a thirty-foot fall. Had the rescuer, the hero, been killed? Scarcely could a man fall in such a way in an air shaft and live.

"There was no need to ask for volunteers. Two men, one of those who had been in the caisson all day and was one of the first rescued, and another, who had not gone down at all, leaped for the ladder. The doctor caught the first by the shoulder and thrust him aside. The other descended a few feet and then came up again, to fall unconscious at the edge of the shaft. Another sprang forward, and yet another, clamoring for leave to go down.

"Just at that moment there was a faint tug at the rope, the first rope, which had been left hanging down in the pit. Hardly expecting anything, one of the men started to haul it in.

"'Come here, boys,' he cried; 'Griffin's on!'

"With their hearts in their mouths, the men hauled in, and the limp and apparently lifeless body of the foreman came to the surface. How he had ever managed to fasten the rope around him was a mystery. His hands, with the flesh rubbed from them to the bone, showed that when he had lost hold on the ladder he had still retained presence of mind enough to grasp the sides and had slid to the foot. There he had found the end of the rope hanging and in a last flicker of understanding had tied it around himself."

"Did he get all right again?" asked Eric eagerly.

"He was blind for six weeks, but finally recovered. Two of the men were seven months in hospital, and one became permanently insane. Four got 'bends,' that fearful disease that strikes caisson-workers, but happily, none died from the terrible experience."

"And the three quarters of an inch still lacking?"

"The cylinder settled just that much and no one ever had to go down the shaft again. The caisson was filled with concrete and the air-shaft sealed."

"And that was the final effort of the sea?"

"Not quite. A month later a storm came up and drove the steamer against the cylinder with such force that eight of the plates--though an inch thick and braced with rigid solidity--were crushed in. Father had taken precautions against such an accident by having had a number of extra plates made, and the lighthouse was finished and turned over to the government three days before the expiration of the time required by the contract. It was a case of man's struggle with the elements, and man won."

"But the honors are with the caisson-men," suggested Eric.

"Yes," agreed the other, "the hero of Smith's Point lighthouse is Griffin, the caisson-man."

CHAPTER X

ADRIFT ON A DERELICT

"Looks to me as though we're going to have a ripsnorter for Christmas,"

said Eric to his friend, Homer, the day before the festive season. "If the sea gets much higher, Cookie won't have to stir the plum duff at all!"

"How's that?"

"All he's got to do is to leave the raisins and the flour and the currants and whatever else goes into the duff lying loose on a table.

The old lady is kicking loose enough to mix it up all right. Doesn't she pitch!"

"Great cook you'd make," laughed the other. "I'm glad we don't have to mess from your galley. But you're right about the weather. It's all right to go hunting for derelicts, but I don't know how the deuce anybody can be expected to find one in a sea like this!"

"We might hit her," suggested Eric, cheerfully.

"You're a hopeful prophet, you are," retorted his chum. "I'm not aching to feed the fishes yet awhile."

"Well, we might b.u.mp, just the same. Then the _Seminole_ would have a chance to hunt us as a derelict, and Van Sluyd--he's on her now, you know--would have the time of his young life."

"I don't think you need to worry about sending a message to Van Sluyd yet awhile," the other answered; "after all, the _Miami_ is still above water."

"She is, once in a while," Eric commented, as the cutter "took it green"

and the water came flooding down the deck. Homer, seeing the wave coming, scuttled for the companion hatchway and went below.

As Eric had said, it seemed difficult to try to locate a derelict in a half a gale of wind. Yet, so dangerous to navigation was the floating wreck which the _Miami_ was seeking, that the risk was worth taking.

When he remembered what the lieutenant of the _Bear_ had said to him once about derelicts, he realized the terrible importance of the quest.

"Every year," he had said, "hundreds of vessels, both sail and steam, leave their home ports for foreign sh.o.r.es, or start from foreign ports for home. The day of the expected arrival comes and goes, two or three days drag by, and still there is no sign of them. Anxious relatives and friends besiege the shipping offices daily for word, and no word comes.

When suspense has pa.s.sed into a.s.sured disaster, the underwriters inscribe against that vessel's name the one word, "Missing!" An average of a vessel a day is the toll of the Seven Seas upon the world's shipping. And the princ.i.p.al cause is--derelicts."

As the _Miami_ plowed her way through the water, dipping her nose into the waves raised by a stiff southeaster, Eric thought of the suddenness of the catastrophe if the Coast Guard cutter, in the darkness, should strike one of those abandoned hulks, floating almost level with the water, and scarcely visible from the vessel's decks.

It was a night calculated to shake the nerve of a youngster who knew that this deadly menace to the life of every one on board might be suddenly lurking in the trough of any one of the waves, that came shouldering their vengeful resentment against the st.u.r.dy little vessel that defied them. They had nourished their grudge against Man, the violator of their ancient domain, over a thousand leagues of sea, for the _Miami_ was a hundred miles to the eastward of the Lookout Shoal, though westward of the limit of the Gulf Stream. The billows thus had a stretch of unbroken ocean from the frozen continent of Antarctica. Of this they made full use, and staunch little vessel though the cutter was, she was making bad weather of it.

The fog was dense and the gale whipped the spray into a blinding sheet.

This was varied by squalls of sleet and hail and for three hours a blinding snowstorm added to the general discomfort. Less than thirty miles to the eastward lay the Gulf Stream, where the water was over 70 and where no snow could ever be, but that gave the crew of the _Miami_ little comfort.

It was not a coast on which vigilance could be relaxed, and Eric was glad when the search for the _Madeleine c.o.o.ney_ was abandoned for a while. It was time, too, for the _Miami_ had all she could do to take care of herself. The Coast Guard vessel was midway between the Frying Pan and the Lookout Shoals, two of the most famous danger points on the Atlantic coast, and the wind had risen to a living gale. The first lieutenant was on the bridge a great deal of the time. For forty-eight hours there had been absolutely no sign of the sun or any star. There was no way to determine the vessel's position except by dead reckoning--always a dangerous thing to trust when there is much leeway and many cross-currents. The lead was going steadily, heaved every few minutes, while the _Miami_ crept along cautiously under the guidance of that ancient safeguard of the mariner.