The Under Dog Part 10

"'What makes you think the Screamer won't lift it?' I asked.

"'Well,' says the Colonel, looking aloft, 'her boom ain't big enough, and that Manila rope is too light. I should think it wasn't over three and three-quarter-inch rope. We all know fifteen tons is enough weight for that size rope, even with a fourfold purchase, and we understand you say this stone weighs twenty-one.'

"'I'm sorry, gentlemen,' I said, 'and if you are worried about it you'd better go 'board the brig, for I'm about ready to pick the stone up and land her.'

"Well, the Major said he guessed he would, if I was determined to pull the mast out of my sloop, but the Colonel said he'd stay by and see it out.

"Just then Bill Nevins stuck his head out of the fo'c's'le. He was blacker than I was; all smeared with grease and stripped to his waist.

It was hot enough anywhere, but it was sizzlin' down where he was.

"'All ready, Cap'n,' he says. 'She's got every pound she can carry.'

"I looked everything over--saw the b.u.t.t of the boom was playin' free in the wooden socket, chucked in a lot of tallow so it could move easy, give an extra twist to the end of the guy, and hollered to Bill to go ahead. She went chuckety-chuck, chuckety-chuck for half a dozen turns; then she slowed down soon as she struck the full weight, and began to pant like an old horse climbin' a hill. All this time the Colonel was callin' out from where he stood near the tiller: 'She'll never lift it, Captain--she'll never lift it.'

"Next come a sc.r.a.pin' 'long the deck, and the big stone swung clear with a foot o' daylight 'tween it and the deck. Then up she went, crawlin'

slowly inch by inch, till she reached the height of the brig's rail.

"Now come the wust part. I knew that when I gave orders to slack away the guy-rope so as to swing the stone aboard the brig, the Screamer would list over and dip her rail in the water. So I made a jump for the rope ladder and shinned up the brig's side so as to take a hand in landin' the stone properly on the brig's deck so as to save her beams and break the jar when I lowered the stone down. I had one eye now on the stone and the other on the water, which was curling over the Screamer's rail and makin' for the fo'c's'le hatch. Should the water pour down this hatch, out would go my fires and maybe up would come her b'iler.

"'Ease away on that guy and lower away easy,' I hollered to Bill. The stone dropped to within two feet of the brig's deck and swung back and for'ards. Then I heard Bill yell. I was expectin' it.

"'Water's comin' in!'

"I leaned over the brig's rail and could see the slop of the sea combin'

over the Screamer's fo'c's'le hatch. Bill's fires _would_ be out the next minute. There was just two feet now 'tween the stone and the deck where I stood--too much to drop; but there was nothing else to do, and I hollered:

"'All gone.'

"Down she come with a run, struck the big timbers on the deck, and by Jiminy! ye could a-heard that old brig groan from stem to stern.

"I jumped on top of the stone and threw off the shackles, and the Screamer came up on an even keel as easy as a duck ridin' the water.

"You just oughter seen the Colonel when the old boat righted herself, and he had climbed up and stood 'longside the Major a-talkin' it over.

"Pretty soon he came up to where I was a-gettin' the tackle ready to lower the stone in the hold, and he says:

"'Well, you made your word good, Cap'n, but I want to tell you that n.o.body but an American could a-done it. It would cost me my commission if I should try to do what you have done.'

"'Well, gentlemen,' I says, 'what was wrong about it? What's the matter with the Screamer's rig?'

"'Well, the size of the rope for one thing,' says the Colonel, 'and the boom.'

"'Well, p'haps you ain't looked it over,' I says, and I began unravelling an end that stuck out near the shackle. 'If you'll look close here'--and I held the end of the rope up--'you'll see that every stran' of that rope is made of the best Manila yarn, and laid as smooth as silk. I stood over that rope myself when it was put together. Old Sam Hanson of New Bedford laid up that rope, and there ain't no better nowhere. I knew what it had to do, and I warn't goin' to take no chances of its not doin' it right. As to that boom, I want to tell ye that I picked that boom out o' about two hundred sticks in Tom Carlin's shipyard, in Stonington, and had it sc.r.a.ped and ironed just to please me. There ain't a rotten knot in it from b.u.t.t to finish, and mighty few of any other kind. That stick's _growed right_--that's what's the matter with it; and it bellies out in the middle, just where it ought to be thickest.'

"Well, they didn't say nothin' for a while, 'cept to walk round the stone once or twice and slap it with their hands, as if they wanted to make sure it was all there. My men were all over it now, and we was gettin' things in shape to finish up. I tell ye the boys were mighty glad, and so was I. It had been a long pull of six months' work, and we were out of most everything, and as soon as the big stone was down in the brig's hold, and warped back and stowed with the others--and that wouldn't take but a day or two more--we would clean up, get our money, and light out for home.

"All this time the Colonel and the Major were buzzin' each other off by the other rail. Pretty soon they both come over to where I stood, and the Colonel reached out his hand.

"'Cap'n Brandt,' he says--and he had a look in his face as if he meant it--and he did, every word of it--'it would give Major Severn and myself great pleasure if you would dine with us to-night at the Canteen. The Admiral is coming, and some brother officers who would be pleased to know you.'

"Well, I was struck all of a heap for a minute, knowing what kind of clo'es I had to go in, and so I says:

"'Well, gentlemen, that's very nice of you, and I see you mean it, and if I had anything fittin' to wear there's nothin' I would like better; but ye see how I'm fixed,' and I lifted my arms so he could see a few holes that he might a-missed before, and I motioned to some other parts of my get-up that needed repairs.

"'That don't make no difference, Cap'n, what kind of clo'es you come in.

We dine at eight o'clock.'

"Of course I knew I couldn't go, and I didn't want 'em to think I intended to go when I didn't, so I says, rather positive-like:

"'Very much obliged, gentlemen, but I guess I'll have to get you to count me out this time.' I knowed I warn't fittin' to sit at anybody's table, especially if that old Admiral was comin'.

"The Colonel see I was in earnest, and he stepped up, quick-like, and laid his hand on my shoulder.

"'Captain Brandt,' he says, 'we ain't worryin' 'bout your clo'es, and don't you worry. You can come in your shirt, you can come in your socks, or you can come without one d.a.m.ned rag--only come!'"

The Captain stopped, shook the ashes from his cigar, slowly raised himself to his feet, and reached for his hat.

"Did you go, Captain?" I asked.

The Captain looked at me for a moment with one of those quizzical glances which so often light up his face when something amuses him, and said, as he blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling:

"Well, I didn't forget my manners. When it got dark--dark, mind ye--I went up and sat on the piazza and had a smoke with 'em--Admiral and all.

But I didn't go to dinner--not in them pants."

A PROCESSION OF UMBRELLAS

I

This all happened on the banks of the Seine, above St. Cloud--above Suresne, in fact, or rather its bridge--the new one that has pieced out the old one with the quaint stone arches that we love.

A silver-gray haze, a pure French gray, hung over the river, softening the sky-line of the near-by hills, and making ghosts of a row of gendarme poplars guarding the opposite bank.

On my side of the stream wandered a path close to the water's edge--so close that I could fill my water-cups without leaving my sketching-stool. Over this path, striped with shadows, big trees towered, their gnarled branches interlaced above my head. On my right, rising out of a green sward cleared of all underbrush, towered other trees, their black trunks sharp-cut against the haze. In the distance, side by side with the path, wound the river, still asleep, save where it flashed into waves of silver laughter at the touch of some frolicsome puff of wind. Elsewhere, although the sun was now hours high, it dozed away, nestling under the overhanging branches making their morning toilet in its depths. But for these long, straight flashes of silver light glinting between the tree-trunks, one could not tell where the haze ended and the river began.

As I worked on, my white umbrella tilted at the exact angle so that my palette, hand, and canvas would be hidden from the inquisitive sun, a group of figures emerged from a clump of low trees, and made their way across the green sward--the man in an ivory-black coat, evidently a priest, even at that distance; the woman in a burnt-umber dress with a dot of Chinese white for a head--probably a cap; and the third, a girl of six or eight in a brown madder dress and yellow-ochre hat.

An out-door painter, while at work, tumbles everything that crosses his path or comes within range of his vision into the crucible of his palette. The most majestic of mountains and the softest of summer clouds are to him but flat washes of cobalt, and the loveliest of dimples on the fairest of cheeks but a shadow-tone, and a high light made real by pats of indigo and vermilion.

So in the three figures went among my trees, the priest in the background against a ma.s.s of yellow light--black against yellow is always a safe contrast; the burnt-umber woman breaking the straight line of a trunk, and the child--red on green--intensifying a slash of zin.o.ber that illumined my own gra.s.sy sward.

Then my interest in the group ceased. The priest, no doubt, was taking his sister, or his aunt, or his mother, with their own or somebody else's little girl, out for an airing, and they had come at the precise moment when I had begun to long for just such a collection of people; and now they could take themselves off and out of my perspective, particularly the reddish-brown girl who kept on dancing in the sunniest places, running ahead of the priest and the woman, lighting up and accentuating half a dozen other corners of the wood interior before me in as many minutes, and making me regret before the paint was half dry on her own little figure that I had not waited for a better composition.

Then she caught sight of my umbrella.

She came straight toward me with that slowing of pace as she approached the nearer, her curiosity getting the better of her timidity--quite as a fawn or a little calf would have done, attracted by some bit of color or movement which was new to it. The brown madder dress I now saw was dotted with little spots of red, like sprays of berries; the yellow-ochre hat was wound with a blue ribbon, and tied with a bow on one side. I could see, too, that she wore slippers, and that her hair was platted in two pig-tails, and hung down her back, the ends fastened with a ribbon that matched the one on her hat.