CAPTAIN BRANDT AT THE THROTTLE
The sun was an hour high when Sanford arrived at Keyport and turned
quickly toward the road leading from the station to Captain Joe’s
cottage, a spring and lightness in his step which indicated not only
robust health, but an eagerness to reach at once the work absorbing
his mind. When he gained the high ground overlooking the cottage and
dock, he paused for a view that always charmed him with its play of
light and color over sea and shore, and which seemed never so
beautiful as in the early morning light.
Below him lay Keyport Village, built about a rocky half-moon of a
harbor, its old wharves piled high with rotting oil-barrels and
flanked by empty warehouses, behind which crouched low, gray-roofed
cabins, squatting in a tangle of streets, with here and there a white
church spire tipped with a restless weather-vane. Higher, on the
hills, were nestled some old homesteads with sloping roofs and wide
porches, and away up on the crest of the heights, overlooking the sea,
stood the more costly structures with well-shaved lawns spotted with
homesick trees from a warmer clime, their arms stretched appealingly
toward the sea.
At his feet lay the brimming harbor itself, dotted with motionless
yachts and various fishing-craft, all reflected upside down in the
still sea, its glassy surface rippled now and then by the dipping
buckets of men washing down the decks, or by the quick water-spider
strokes of some lobster-fisherman,—the click of the row-locks
pulsating in the breathless morning air.
On the near point of the half-moon stood Keyport Light,—an
old-fashioned factory chimney of a Light,—built of brick, but painted
snow-white with a black cigar band around its middle, its top
surmounted by a copper lantern. This flashed red and white at night,
over a radius of twenty miles. Braced up against its base, for a
better hold, was a little building hiding a great fog-horn, which on
thick days and nights bellowed out its welcome to Keyport’s best.
On the far point of the moon—the one opposite the Light, and some two
miles away—stretched sea-meadows broken with clumps of rock and
shelter-houses for cattle, and between these two points, almost
athwart the mouth of the harbor, like a huge motionless whale lay
Crotch Island, its backbone knotted with summer cottages. Beyond the
island away out under the white glare of the risen sun could be seen a
speck of purplish-gray fringed with bright splashes of spray glinting
in the dazzling light. This was Shark’s Ledge.
As Sanford looked toward the site of the new Light a strange sensation
came over him. There lay the work on which his reputation would rest
and by which he would hereafter be judged. Everything else he had so
far accomplished was, he knew, but a preparation for this his greatest
undertaking. Not only were the engineering problems involved new to
his experience, but in his attitude in regard to them he had gone
against all precedents as well as against the judgments of older
heads, and had relied almost exclusively upon Captain Joe’s personal
skill and pluck. While it was true that he never doubted his ultimate
success, there always came a tugging at his heartstrings and a
tightening of his throat whenever he looked toward the site of the
lighthouse.
Turning from the scene with a long drawn breath, he walked with
slackened step down the slope that led to the long dock fronting the
captain’s cottage. As he drew nearer he saw that the Screamer had been
moored between the captain’s dock (always lumbered with paraphernalia
required for sea-work) and the great granite-wharf, which was piled
high with enormous cubes of stone, each as big as two pianos.
On her forward deck was bolted a hoisting-engine, and thrust up
through the hatch of the forecastle was the smoke-stack of the boiler,
already puffing trial feathers of white steam into the morning air.
She had, too, the heavy boom and stout mast used as a derrick. Captain
Joe had evidently seen no reason to change his mind about her, for he
was at the moment on her after-deck, overhauling a heavy coil of
manilla rope, and reeving it in the block himself, the men standing by
to catch the end of the line.
When Sanford joined the group there was no general touching of
hats,—outward sign of deference that a group of laborers on land
would have paid their employer. In a certain sense, each man here was
chief. Each man knew his duty and did it, quietly, effectually, and
cheerfully. The day’s work had no limit of hours. The pay was never
fixed by a board of delegates, one half of whom could not tell a
marlinespike from a monkey-wrench. These men had enlisted for a war
with winds and storms and changing seas, and victory meant something
more to them than pay once a month and plum duff once a week. It meant
hours of battling with the sea, of tugging at the lines, waist-deep in
the boiling surf that rolled in from Montauk. It meant constant,
unceasing vigilance day and night, in order that some exposed site
necessary for a bedstone might be captured and held before a
southeaster could wreck it, and thus a vantage-point be lost in the
laying of the masonry.
Each man took his share of wet and cold and exposure without
grumbling. When, by some accident, a cowardly and selfish spirit
joined the force, Captain Joe, on the first word of complaint, handed
the man his money and put him ashore. The severity of the work was
never resented. It was only against their common enemies, the winds
and the seas, that murmurs were heard. “Drat that wind!” one would
say. “Here she’s a-haulin’ to the east’rd agin, an’ we ain’t got them
j’ints [in the masonry] p’inted.” Or, “It makes a man sick to see th’
way this month’s been a-goin’ on,—not a decent clay since las’
Tuesday.”
Sanford liked these men. He was always at home with them. He loved
their courage, their grit, their loyalty to one another and to the
work itself. The absence of ceremony among them never offended him.
His cheery “Good-morning” as he stepped aboard was as cheerily
answered, but no other demonstration took place.
Captain Joe stopped work only long enough to shake Sanford’s hand and
to present him to the newcomer, Captain Bob Brandt of the Screamer.
“Cap’n Bob!” he called, waving his hand.
“Ay, ay, sir!” came the ready response of his early training.
“Come aft, sir. Mr. Sanford wants ye.” The “sir” was merely a
recognition of the captain’s rank.
A tall, straight, blue-eyed young fellow of twenty-two, with a face
like an open book, walked down the deck,—one of those perfectly
simple, absolutely fearless, alert men found so often on the New
England coast, with legs and arms of steel, body of hickory, and hands
of whalebone: cabin-boy at twelve, common sailor at sixteen, first
mate at twenty, and full captain the year he voted.
Sanford looked him all over, from his shoes to his cap. He knew a
round full man when he saw him. This one seemed to be without a flaw.
Sanford saw too that he possessed that yeast of good nature without
which the best of men are heavy and dull.
“Can you lift these blocks, Captain Brandt?” he asked in a hearty
tone, more like that of a comrade than an employer, his hand extended
in greeting.
“Well, I can try, sir,” came the modest reply, the young man’s face
lighting up as he looked into Sanford’s eyes, where he read with equal
quickness a ready appreciation, so encouraging to every man who
intends to do his best.
Captain Brandt and every member of the gang knew that it was not the
mere weight of these enrockment blocks which made the handling of them
so serious a matter; twelve tons is a light lift for many
boat-derricks. It was the fact that they must be loaded aboard a
vessel not only small enough to be easily handled in any reasonable
weather, but with a water-draught shoal enough to permit her lying
safely in a running tide alongside the Ledge while the individual
blocks were being lowered over her side.
The hangers-on about the dock questioned whether any sloop could do
this work. All winter, in fact, they had discussed it about the tavern
stoves.
“Billy,” said old Marrows, an assumed authority on stone-sloops, but
not in Sanford’s employ, although a constant applicant, “I ain’t
sayin’ nothin’ agin her beam, mind, but she’s too peaked forrud.
’Nother thing, when she’s got them stones slung, them chain-plates
won’t hold ’er shrouds. I wouldn’t be s’prised to see that mast jerked
clean out’er her.”
Bill Lacey, the handsome young rigger to whom the remark was
addressed, leaned over the sloop’s rail, scanned every bolt in her
plates, glanced up at the standing rigging, tried it with his hand as
if it were a tight-rope, and with a satisfied air answered, “Them
plates is all right, Marrows,—it’s her b’iler that’s a-worryin’ me.
What do you say, Caleb?” turning to Caleb West, a broad-shouldered,
grizzled man in a sou’wester, who was mending a leak in a
diving-dress, the odor of the burning cement in a pan beside him
mingling with the savory smell of frying pork coming up from the
galley.
“Wall, I ain’t said, Billy,” replied Caleb in a cheery voice, stroking
his bushy gray beard. “Them as don’t know better keep shet.”
There was a loud laugh at the young rigger’s expense, in which
everybody except Lacey and Caleb joined. Lacey’s face hardened under
the thrust, while Caleb still smiled, a quaint expression
overspreading his features,—one that often came when something
pleased him, and which by its sweetness showed how little venom lay
behind his reproofs.
“These ’ere sloops is jes’ like women,” said George Nickles, the cook,
a big, oily man, with his sleeves rolled up above his elbows, a greasy
apron about his waist. He was dipping a bucket overboard. “Ye can’t
tell nothin’ about ’em till ye tries ’em.”
The application of the simile not being immediately apparent,—few of
Nickles’ similes ever were,—nobody answered. Lacey stole a look at
Nickles and then at Caleb, to see if the shot had been meant for him,
and meeting the diver’s unconscious clear blue eyes, looked seaward
again.
Lonny Bowles, a big derrickman from Noank quarries, in a red shirt,
discolored on the back with a pink Y where his suspenders had crossed,
now moved nearer and joined in the discussion.
“She kin h’ist any two on ’em, an’ never wet ’er deck combin’s. I seen
these Cape Ann sloops afore, when we wuz buildin’ Stonin’ton
breakwater. Ye wouldn’t believe they had it in ’em till ye see ’em
work. Her b’iler’s all right.”
“Don’t you like the sloop, Caleb?” said Sanford, who had been
listening. “Don’t you think she’ll do her work?” he continued, moving
a rebellious leg of the rubber dress to sit the closer.
“Well, of course, sir, I ain’t knowed ’er long ’nough to swear by yit.
She’s fittin’ for loadin’ ’em on land, maybe, but she may have some
trouble gittin’ rid of ’em at the Ledge. Her b’iler looks kind o’ weak
to me,” and the master diver bent over the pan, stirring the boiling
cement with his sheath-knife, the rubber suit sprawled out over his
knees, the awkward, stiff, empty legs and arms of the dress flopping
about as he patched its many leaks. Then he added with a quaint smile,
“But if Cap’n Joe says she’s all right, ye can pin to her.”
Sanford moved a little closer to Caleb, holding the pan of cement for
him, and watching him at work. He had known him for years as a
fearless diver of marvelous pluck and endurance; one capable of
working seven consecutive hours under water. When an English bark had
run on top of Big Spindle Reef and backed off into one hundred and ten
feet of water, the captain and six of the crew were saved, but the
captain’s wife, helpless in the cabin, had been drowned. Caleb had
gone below, cleared away the broken deck that pinned her down, and had
brought her body up in his arms. His helmet was spattered inside with
the blood that trickled from his ears, owing to the enormous pressure
of the sea. This had been not a twelvemonth since.
The constant facing of dangers had made of the diver a quiet, reticent
man. There was, too, a gentleness and restful patience about him that
always appealed to Sanford, and next to Captain Joe he was the one man
on the working force whom he trusted most. Of late his pale blue eyes
had shone with a softer light, as if he were perpetually hugging some
happiness to himself. Those who knew him best said that all this happy
gentleness had come with the girl wife. Since he had entered Sanford’s
employment he had married a second and a younger wife,—a mere child,
the men said, young enough to be his daughter, too young for a man of
forty-five.
And yet Caleb was not an old man, if the possession of vigor and
energy meant anything. His cheeks had the rosy hue of perfect health,
and his step was lighter and more agile than that of many men half his
years. Only his beard was gray. Yet he was called by his shipmates
old, for in the hard working world in which he lived none but the
earlier years of a man’s life counted as youth.
His cabin, a small, two-story affair, bought with the money he had
saved during his fifteen years on the Lightship and after his first
wife’s death, lay a short distance up the shore above that of Captain
Joe, and in plain sight of the Screamer.
When Caleb rose to wash his hands, he caught sight of a blue apron
tossing on its distant porch. Bill Lacey saw the apron too, and had
answered it a moment later with a little wave of his own. Caleb did
not notice Billy’s signal, but Captain Joe did, and a peculiar look
filled his eye that the men did not often see. In his confusion Lacey
flushed scarlet, and upset the pan of cement.
When Nickles announced breakfast, Captain Joe soused a bucket
overboard, rested it on the rail and plunged in his hands, the
splashing drops glistening in the sunlight, and called out:—
“Come, Mr. Sanford,—breakfast’s ready, men.” Then, waving his hand to
Caleb and the others who had been discussing the Screamer, he said,
laughing, “All you men what’s gittin’ skeery ’bout this sloop kin step
ashore. I’m a-goin’ to load three o’ them stone aboard here after
breakfast, if I roll her over bottom side up.”
Sanford sat at the head of the table, his back to the companionway,
the crew’s bunks within reach of his hand. He was the only man who
wore a coat. Set out before him were fried eggs sizzling in squares of
pork; hashed potatoes, browned in what was left of the sizzle;
saleratus biscuit, full of dark spots; and coffee in tin cups. There
was also a small jug of molasses, protected by a pewter top, and there
was, too, a bottle of tomato catsup, whose contents were
indiscriminately spattered over every plate.
Long years of association had familiarized Sanford with certain rules
of etiquette to be observed at a meal like this. Whoever finished
first, he knew, must push back his stool out of the way and instantly
mount to the deck. In confined quarters, elbow-room is a luxury, and
its free gift a courtesy. He also knew that to leave anything on his
plate would have been regarded as an evidence of extreme bad manners,
suggesting moreover a reflection upon the skill of the cook. It was
also a part of the code to wipe one’s knife carefully on the last
piece of bread, which was to be swallowed immediately, thus
obliterating all traces of the repast, except, of course, the bones,
which must be picked clean and piled on one side of the plate. Captain
Joe himself never neglected any of these little amenities.
Sanford forgot none of them. He wiped his knife and cleared his plate
as carefully as any of his men. He drank from his tin cup, and ate his
eggs and fried pork too with the same zest that he would have felt
before one of Sam’s choicest breakfasts. He really enjoyed these
repasts. To him there was something wonderfully inspiring in watching
a group of big, strong, broad-breasted, horny-handed laboring men
intent on satisfying a hunger born of fresh air and hard work. There
was an eagerness about their movements, a relish as each mouthful
disappeared, attended by a good humor and sound digestion that would
have given a sallow-faced dyspeptic a new view of life, and gone far
toward converting a dilettante to the belief that although forks and
napkins were perhaps indispensable luxuries, existence might not be
wholly desolate with plain fingers and shirt-cuffs.
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 sturdy 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 ashore 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 association 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 shore 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
butt 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 butt 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 hoarse 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 hoarse, scraping 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, passed 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.