The Collector of the Port and the company were rivals; both killed their
men, one at sea, the other in the quarry. The company objected to pelagic
slaughter and sent some men with harpoons, bombs, and shark-hooks to the
Port; but the Collector sheered off to sea and waited for them to go away.
The company could not keep the quarrymen from bathing; Lee could not
keep the Collector from Port-of-Waves. Every year two or three quarrymen
fell to his share; the company killed the even half-dozen. Years before,
the quarrymen had named the shark; the name fascinated everybody with
its sinister conventionality. In truth he was Collector of the Port,—an
official who took toll of all who ventured from this Port where nothing
entered from the sea save the sea itself, wave on wave, wave after wave.
In the superintendent’s office there were two rolls of victims,—victims
of the quarry and victims of the Collector of the Port. Pensions were not
allowed to families of the latter class, so, as Dyce said to Dyce’s dying
brother: “Thank God you was blowed up, an’ say no more about it, Hank.”
There was, curiously enough, little animosity against the Collector of
the Port among the quarrymen. When June brought the great shark back to
the Port they welcomed him with sticks of dynamite, but nevertheless a
sense of proprietorship, of exclusive right to the biggest shark on the
coast, aroused in the quarrymen a sentiment akin to pride. Between the
shark and the men existed an uncanny comradeship, curiously in evidence
when the company’s imported shark-destroyers appeared at the Port.
“G’wan now,” observed Farrely, “an’ divil a shark ye’ll get in the
wather, me bucks! Is it sharks ye’ll harpoon? Sure th’ company’s full o’
thim.”
The shark-catchers, harpoons, bombs, and hooks, retired after a month’s
useless worrying, and the men jeered them as they embarked on the gravel
train.
“Drhop a dynamite shtick on the nob av his nibs!” shouted Farrely after
them—meaning the president of the company. The next day, little Cæsar
l’Hommedieu, indulging in his semi-annual bath, was appreciated and
accepted by the Collector of the Port, and his name was added to the
unpensioned roll in the office of the company’s superintendent, Francis
Lee.
Helen Pine, sitting alone in her room, copied the roll, erased little
Cæsar’s name from the pay-roll, computed the total back pay due him, and
made out an order on the company for $20.39. Then she rose, stepped
quietly into Lee’s office which adjoined her own room, and silently
handed him the order.
Lee was busy and motioned her to be seated. Dyce and Finn, hats in hand,
looked obliquely at her as she leaned on the window-ledge, face turned
toward the sea. She heard Lee say, “Go on, Finn;” and Finn began again in
his smooth plausible voice:
“I opened the safe on a flat-car, an’ God knows who uncoupled the flat.
Then Dyce signalled go ahead, but Henderson he sez Dyce signalled
to back her up, an’ the first I see was that flat hangin’ over the
dump-dock. Then she tipped up like a see-saw an’ slid the safe into the
water—fifty-eight feet sheer at low tide.”
Lee said quietly: “Rig a derrick on the dump-dock, and tell Kinny to get
his diving kit ready by three o’clock.”
Finn and Dyce exchanged glances.
“Kinny he went to Bangor last night to see about them new drills,” said
Finn defiantly.
“Who sent him?” asked Lee angrily. “Oh, you did, eh?”
“I thought you wanted them drills,” repeated Finn.
Lee’s eyes turned from Finn to Dyce. There was, in the sullen faces
before him, something that he had never before seen, something worse than
sinister. The next moment he said pleasantly: “Well then, tell Lefty
Sawyer to take his diving kit and be ready by three. If you need a new
ladder at the dump-dock send one there by noon. That is all, men.”
When Finn and Dyce had gone, Lee sprang to his feet and began to pace
the office. Once he stopped to light his pipe; once he jerked open the
top drawer of his table and glanced at a pair of heavy Colt’s revolvers
lying there, cocked and loaded. He sat down at his desk after a while
and spoke, perhaps half unconsciously, to Helen, as though he had been
speaking to her since Finn and Dyce left:
“They’re a hard crowd—a tough lot—and I knew it would come to a crisis
sooner or later. Last year they drove the other superintendent to resign,
and I was warned to look out for myself. Now they see that they can’t use
me, and they mean to get rid of me.”
She turned from the window as he finished; he looked at her without
seeing the oval face, the dark questioning eyes, the young rounded figure
involuntarily bending toward him.
“They tipped that safe off the dock on purpose,” he said; “they sent
Kinny to Bangor on a fool’s errand. Now Sawyer’s got to go down and see
what can be done. I know what he’ll say!— He’ll report the safe broken
and one or two cash-boxes missing, and he’ll bring up the rest and wait
for a chance to divide with his gang.”
He started to his feet and began to pace the floor again, talking all the
while:
“It’s come to a crisis now, and _I’m_ not going under! I’ll face them
down; I’ll break that gang as they break stone! If I only knew how to use
a diving kit—and if I dared—with Dyce at the life-line—”
Half an hour later Lee, seated at his desk, raised his pale face from his
hands and, for the first time, became conscious that Helen sat watching
him beside the window.
“Can I do anything for you?” he asked pleasantly.
She held the order out to him; he took it, examined it, and, picking up a
pen, signed his name.
“Forward it to the company,” he said; “Cæsar’s family will collect it
quicker than the shark collected Cæsar.”
He did not mean to shock the girl with cynicism; indeed it was only
such artificial indifference that enabled him to endure the misery
of the Port-of-Waves,—misery that came under his eyes from sea and
land,—interminable hopeless human woe.
What could he do for the lacerated creatures at the quarry? He had only
his salary. What could he do for families made destitute? The mica
crushed and cut and blinded; the Collector of the Port exacted bloody
toll in spite of him. He could not drive the dust-choked, half-maddened
quarrymen from their one solace and balm, the cool, healing ocean; he
could not drive the Collector from the Port-of-Waves.
“I didn’t mean to speak unfeelingly,” he said. “I feel such things very
deeply.”
To his surprise and displeasure she replied: “I did not know you felt
anything.”
She grew red after she said it; he stared at her.
“Do you regard me as brutal?” he asked sarcastically.
“No,” she said, steadying her voice: “you are not brutal; one must be
human to be brutal.”
He looked at her half angrily, half inclined to laugh.
“You mean I am devoid of human feeling?”
“I am not here to criticise my employer,” she answered faintly.
“Oh—but you have.”
She was silent.
“You said you were not aware that I felt anything.”
She did not reply.
He thought to himself: “I took her from the quarry, and this is what I
get.” She divined his thought. She could have answered: “And you sent me
to the quarry—for the memory of a kiss.” But she did not speak.
Watching her curiously, he noticed the gray woollen gown, the spotless
collar and cuffs, the light on her hair, like light on watered silk. Her
young face was turned toward the window. For the first time it occurred
to him that she might be lonely. He wondered where she came from, why she
had sought Port-of-Waves among all places on earth, what tragedy could
have driven her from kin and kind to the haunts of men. She seemed so
utterly alone, so hopelessly dependent, so young that his conscience
smote him, and he resolved to be a little companionable toward her, as
far as his position of superintendent permitted. True, he could not do
much; and whatever he might do would perhaps be misinterpreted by her,
certainly by the quarrymen.
“A safe fell off the dock, to-day,” he said pleasantly, forgetting she
had been present at the announcement of the disaster by Finn and Dyce.
“Would you like to see the diver go down?”
She turned toward him and smiled.
“It might interest you,” he went on, surprised at the beauty of her
eyes; “we’re going to try to hoist the safe out of fifty odd feet of
water—unless it is smashed on the rocks. Come down when I go at three
o’clock.”
As he spoke his face grew grave, and he glanced at the open drawer by his
elbow, where two blue revolver barrels lay shining in the morning light.
At noon she went into her little room, locked the door, and sat down on
the bed. She cried steadily till two o’clock; from two until three she
spent the time in obliterating all traces of tears; at three he knocked
at her door, and she opened the door, fresh, dainty, smiling, and joined
him, tying the strings of a pink sun-bonnet under her oval chin.