The work on the sea-wall progressed. The coffer-dam which had been built
by driving into the mud of the bottom a double row of heavy tongued and
grooved planking in two parallel rows, and bulkheading each end with
heavy boards, had been filled with concrete to low-water mark, consuming
not only the contents of the delayed scow, but two subsequent cargoes,
both of which had been unloaded by Tom Grogan.
To keep out the leakage, steam-pumps were kept going night and day.
By dint of hard work the upper masonry of the wall had been laid to the
top course, ready for the coping, and there was now every prospect that
the last stone would be lowered into place before the winter storms set
in.
The shanty--a temporary structure, good only for the life of the
work--rested on a set of stringers laid on extra piles driven outside of
the working-platform. When the submarine work lies miles from shore, a
shanty is the only shelter for the men, its interior being arranged
with sleeping-bunks, with one end partitioned off for a kitchen and
a storage-room. This last is filled with perishable property, extra
blocks, Manila rope, portable forges, tools, shovels, and barrows.
For this present sea-wall--an amphibious sort of structure, with one
foot on land and the other in the water--the shanty was of light pine
boards, roofed over, and made water-tight by tarred paper. The bunks had
been omitted, for most of the men boarded in the village. In this way
increased space for the storage of tools was gained, besides room for
a desk containing the government working drawings and specifications,
pay-rolls, etc. In addition to its door, fastened at night with a
padlock, and its one glass window, secured by a ten-penny nail, the
shanty had a flap-window, hinged at the bottom. When this was propped
up with a barrel stave it made a counter from which to pay the men, the
paymaster standing inside.
Babcock was sitting on a keg of dock spikes inside this working
shanty some days after he had discovered Tom's identity, watching his
bookkeeper preparing the pay-roll, when a face was thrust through the
square of the window. It was not a prepossessing face, rather pudgy and
sleek, with uncertain, drooping mouth, and eyes that always looked over
one's head when he talked. It was the property of Mr. Peter Lathers, the
yardmaster of the depot.
“When you're done payin' off maybe you'll step outside, sir,” he said,
in a confiding tone. “I got a friend of mine who wants to know you. He's
a stevedore, and does the work to the fort. He's never done nothin' for
you, but I told him next time you come down I'd fetch him over. Say,
Dan!” beckoning with his head over his shoulder; then, turning to
Babcock,--“I make you acquainted, sir, with Mr. Daniel McGaw.”
Two faces now filled the window--Lathers's and that of a red-headed man
in a straw hat.
“All right. I'll attend to you in a moment. Glad to see you, Mr. McGaw,”
said Babcock, rising from the keg, and looking over his bookkeeper's
shoulder.
Lathers's friend proved to be a short, big-boned, square-shouldered
Irishman, about forty years of age, dressed in a once black broadcloth
suit with frayed buttonholes, the lapels and vest covered with
grease-spots. Around his collar, which had done service for several
days, was twisted a red tie decorated with a glass pin. His face was
spattered with blue powder-marks, as if from some quarry explosion. A
lump of a mustache dyed dark brown concealed his upper lip, making all
the more conspicuous the bushy, sandy-colored eyebrows that shaded a
pair of treacherous eyes. His mouth was coarse and filled with teeth
half worn off, like those of an old horse. When he smiled these opened
slowly like a vise. Whatever of humor played about this opening lost its
life instantly when these jaws clicked together again.
The hands were big and strong, wrinkled and seamed, their rough backs
spotted like a toad's, the wrists covered with long spidery hairs.
Babcock noticed particularly his low, flat forehead when he removed his
hat, and the dry, red hair growing close to the eyebrows.
“I wuz a-sp'akin' to me fri'nd Mister Lathers about doin' yer wurruk,”
began McGaw, resting one foot on a pile of barrow-planks, his elbow on
his knee. “I does all the haulin' to the foort. Surgint Duffy knows me.
I wuz along here las' week, an' see ye wuz put back fer stone. If I'd
had the job, I'd had her unloaded two days befoore.”
“You're dead right, Dan,” said Lathers, with an expression of disgust.
“This woman business ain't no good, nohow. She ought to be over her
tubs.”
“She does her work, though,” Babcock said, beginning to see the drift of
things.
“Oh, I don't be sayin' she don't. She's a dacint woman, anough; but thim
b'ys as is a-runnin' her carts is raisin' h--ll all the toime.”
“And then look at the teams,” chimed in Lathers, with a jerk of his
thumb toward the dock--“a lot of staggering horse-car wrecks you
couldn't sell to a glue-factory. That big gray she had a-hoistin' is
blind of an eye and sprung so forrard he can't hardly stand.”
At this moment the refrain of a song from somewhere near the board fence
came wafting through the air,--
“And he wiped up the floor wid McGeechy.”
McGaw turned his head in search of the singer, and not finding him,
resumed his position.
“What are your rates per ton?” asked Babcock.
“We're a-chargin' forty cints,” said McGaw, deferring to Lathers, as if
for confirmation.
“Who's 'we'?”
“The Stevedores' Union.”
“But Mrs. Grogan is doing it for thirty,” said Babcock, looking straight
into McGaw's eyes, and speaking slowly and deliberately.
“Yis, I heared she wuz a-cuttin' rates; but she can't live at it. If I
does it, it'll be done roight, an' no throuble.”
“I'll think it over,” said Babcock quietly, turning on his heel. The
meanness of the whole affair offended him--two big, strong men vilifying
a woman with no protector but her two hands. McGaw should never lift a
shovel for him.