FROM THE LANTERN DECK
Tony Marvin, the keeper of Keyport Light, was in his little room next
the fog-horn when Sanford and the skipper, wet and glistening as two
seals, knocked at the outer door of his quarters.
“Well, I want to know!” broke out Tony in his bluff, hearty way, as he
opened the door. “Come in,—come in! Nice weather for ducks, ain’t it?
Sunthin’ ’s up, or you fellers wouldn’t be out to-day,” leading the
way to his room. “Anybody drownded?” he asked facetiously, stopping
for a moment on the threshold.
“Not yet, Tony,” said Sanford in a serious tone. He had known the
keeper for years,—had, in fact, helped him get his appointment at the
Light. “But I’m worried about Captain Joe and Caleb.” He opened his
coat, and walked across the room to a bench set against the
whitewashed wall, little streams of water following him as he moved.
“Did you see them go by? They’re in Captain Potts’s Dolly Varden.”
“Gosh hang, no! Ye ain’t never tellin’ me, be ye, that the cap’n ’s
gone to the Ledge in all this smother? And that fool Caleb with him,
too?”
“Yes, and Lonny Bowles,” interrupted the skipper. As he spoke he
pulled off one of his water-logged boots and poured the contents into
a fire-bucket standing against the wall.
“How long since they started?” asked the keeper anxiously, taking down
his spyglass from a rack above the buckets.
“Half an hour ago.”
“Then they’re this side of Crotch Island yit, if they’re anywheres.
Let’s go up to the lantern. Mebbe we can see ’em,” he said, unlatching
the door of the tower. “Better leave them boots behind, Mr. Sanford,
and shed yer coat. A feller’s knees git purty tired climbin’ these
steps, when he ain’t used to’t; there’s a hundred and ten of ’em.
Here, try these slippin’s of mine,” and he kicked a pair of slippers
from under a chair. “Guess they’ll fit ye. Seems to me Caleb’s been
doin’ his best to git drownded since that high-flyer of a gal left
him. He come by here daylight, one mornin’ awhile ago, in a sharpie
that you wouldn’t cross a creek in, and it blowin’ half a gale. I
ain’t surprised o’ nothin’ in Caleb, but Cap’n Joe ought’er have more
sense. What’s he goin’ for, anyhow, to-day?” he grumbled, as Sanford
drew on the slippers and placed his foot on the first iron step of the
spiral staircase.
“He’s taken the new pump with him,” said Sanford, as he followed the
keeper up the winding steps, the skipper close behind. “They broke the
old pump on Saturday, and everything is stopped on the Ledge. Captain
knows we’re behind, and he doesn’t want to lose an hour. But it was a
foolish venture. He had no business to risk his life in a blow like
this, Tony.” There was a serious tone in Sanford’s voice which
quickened the keeper’s step.
“What good is the pump to him, if he does get it there? Men can’t work
to-day,” Tony answered. He was now a dozen steps ahead, his voice
sounding hollow in the reverberations of the round tower.
“Oh, that ain’t a-goin’ to stop us!” shouted the skipper from below,
resting a moment to get his breath as he spoke. “We’ve got the masonry
clean out o’ water; we’re all right if Cap’n Joe can git steam on the
hoister.”
The keeper, whose legs had become as supple as a squirrel’s in the
five years he had climbed up and down these stairs, reached the
lantern deck some minutes ahead of the others. He was wiping the sweat
from the lantern glass with a clean white cloth, and drawing back the
day curtains so that they might see better, when Sanford’s head
appeared above the lens deck.
Once upon the iron floor of the deck, the roar of the wind and the
dash of the rain, which had been deadened by the thick walls of the
structure surrounding the staircase below, burst upon them seemingly
with increased fury. A tremulous, swaying motion was plainly felt. A
novice would have momentarily expected the structure to measure its
length on the rocks below. Above the roar of the storm could be heard,
at intervals, the thunder of the surf breaking on Crotch Island beach.
“Gosh A’mighty!” exclaimed the keeper, adjusting the glass, which he
had carried up in his hand. “It’s a-humpin’ things, and no mistake.
See them rollers break on Crotch Island,” and he swept his glass
around. “I see ’em. There they are,—three o’ them. There’s Cap’n
Joe,—ain’t no mistakin’ him. He’s got his cap on, same’s he allers
wears. And there’s Caleb; his beard’s a-flyin’ straight out. Who’s
that in the red flannen shirt?”
“Lonny Bowles,” said the skipper.
“Yes, that’s Bowles. He’s a-bailin’ for all he’s worth. Cap’n Joe’s
got the tiller and Caleb’s a-hangin’ on the sheet. Here, Mr. Sanford,”
and he held out the glass, “ye kin see ’em plain ’s day.”
Sanford waved the glass away. The keeper’s eyes, he said, were better
accustomed to scanning a scene like this. He himself could see the
Dolly, a mile or more this side of Crotch Island Point, and nearly two
miles away from where the three watchers stood. She was hugging the
inside shore-line, her sail close-reefed. He could even make out the
three figures, which were but so many black dots beaded along her
gunwale. All about the staggering boat seethed the gray sea, mottled
in wavy lines of foam. Over this circled white gulls, shrieking as
they flew.
“He’s gittin’ ready to go about,” continued the keeper, his eye still
to the glass. “I see Caleb shiftin’ his seat. They know they can’t
make the P’int on that leg. Jiminy-whiz, but it’s soapy out there! See
’er take that roller! Gosh!”
The boat careened, the dots crowded together, and the Dolly bore away
from the shore. It was evidently Captain Joe’s intention to give
Crotch Island Point a wide berth and then lay a straight course for
the Ledge, now barely visible through the haze, the derricks and
masonry alone showing clear above the fringe of breaking surf tossed
white against the dull gray sky.
All eyes were now fixed on the Dolly. Three times she laid a course
toward the Ledge, and three times she was forced back behind the
island.
“They’ve got to give it up,” said the keeper, laying down his glass.
“That tide cuts round that ’ere P’int like a mill-tail, to say nothin’
o’ them smashers that’s rollin’ in. How she keeps afloat out there is
what beats me.”
“She wouldn’t if Cap’n Joe wasn’t at the tiller,” said the skipper,
with a laugh. “Ye can’t drown him no more ’n a water-rat.” He had an
abiding faith in Captain Joe almost as great as that of Aunty Bell.
Sanford’s face brightened. An overwhelming anxiety for the safety of
the endangered men had strangely, almost unaccountably unnerved him.
It was some comfort to feel Captain Brandt’s confidence in Captain
Joe’s ability to meet the situation; for that little cockle-shell
battling before him as if for its very life—one moment on top of a
mountain of water, and the next buried out of sight—held between its
frail sides not only two of the best men whom he knew, but really two
of the master spirits of their class. One of them, Captain Joe,
Sanford admired more than any other man, loving him, too, as he had
loved but few.
With a smile to the skipper, he looked off again toward the sea. He
saw the struggling boat make a fourth attempt to clear the Point, and
in the movement lurch wildly; he saw, too, that her long boom was
swaying from side to side. Through the driving spray he made out that
two of the dots were trying to steady it. The third dot was standing
in the stern.
Here some new movement caught his eye. He strained his neck forward;
then taking the glass from the skipper watched the little craft
intently.
“There’s something the matter,” he said nervously, after a moment’s
pause. “That’s Captain Joe waving to one of those two smacks out there
scudding in under close reefs. Look yourself; am I right, Tony?” and
he passed the glass to the keeper again.
“Looks like it, sir,” replied Tony in a low tone, the end of the glass
fixed on the tossing boat. “The smack sees ’em now, sir. She’s goin’
about.”
The fishing-smack careened, fluttered in the wind like a baffled
pigeon, and bore across to the plunging boat.
“The spray’s a-flyin’ so ye can’t see clear, sir,” said the keeper,
his eye still at the glass. “She ain’t actin’ right, somehow; that
boom seems to bother ’em. Cap’n Joe’s runnin’ for’ard. Gosh! that one
went clean over ’er. Look out! _Look out!_” in quick crescendo,
as if the endangered crew could have heard him. “See ’er take ’em!
There’s another went clean across. My God, Mr. Sanford! she’s
over,—capsized!”
Sanford made a rush for the staircase, a rash, unreasonable impulse to
help taking possession of him. The keeper caught him firmly by the
arm.
“Come back, sir! You’re only wastin’ yer breath. That smack’ll get
’em.”
Captain Brandt picked up the glass that the keeper had dropped. His
hands shook so he could hardly adjust the lens.
“The boom’s broke,” he said in a trembling voice; “that’s what ails
’em. She’s bottom side up. Lord, if she ain’t a-wallowin’! I never
’spected to see Cap’n Joe in a hole like that. They’re all three in
th’ water; ain’t a man livin’ can swim ashore in that sea! Why don’t
that blamed smack go about? They’ll sink ’fore she can get to ’em.
Where’s the cap’n? He ain’t come up yet. There’s Lonny and Caleb, but
I don’t see Cap’n Joe nowhere.”
Sanford leaned against the brass rail of the great lens, his eyes on
the fishing-smack swooping down to the rescue. The helplessness of his
position, his absolute inability to help the drowning men, overwhelmed
him: Captain Joe and Caleb perishing before his eyes, and he powerless
to lift a hand.
“Do you see the captain anywhere?” he asked, with an effort at
self-control. The words seemed to clog his throat.
“Not yet, sir, but there’s Lonny, and there’s Caleb. You look, Mr.
Marvin,” he said, turning to the keeper. He could not trust himself
any longer. For the first time his faith in Captain Joe had failed
him.
Marvin held the glass to his eye and covered the boat. He hardly dared
breathe.
“Can’t see but two, sir.” His voice was broken and husky. “Can’t make
out the cap’n nowheres. Something must ’a’ struck him an’ stunned him.
My—my—ain’t it a shame for him to cut up a caper like this! I allers
told Cap’n Joe he’d get hurted in some foolish kick-up. Why in hell
don’t them other fellers do something? If they don’t look out, the
Dolly’ll drift so far they’ll lose him,—standin’ there like two
dummies an’ lettin’ a man drown! Lord! Lord! ain’t it too bad!” The
keeper’s eyes filled. Everything was dim before him.
The skipper sank on the oil-chest and bowed his head. Sanford’s hands
were over his face. If the end had come, he did not want to see it.
The small, close lantern became as silent as a death-chamber. The
keeper, his back against the lens rail, folded his arms across his
chest and stared out to sea. His face bore the look of one watching a
dying man. Sanford did not move. His thoughts were on Aunty Bell. What
should he say to her? Was there not something he could have done?
Should he not, after all, have hailed the first tug in the harbor and
gone in search of them before it was too late?
The seconds dragged. The silence in its intensity became unbearable.
With a deep indrawn sigh, Captain Brandt turned toward Sanford and
touched him. “Come away,” he said, with the tenderness of one strong
man who suffers and is stirred with greater sorrow by another’s grief.
“This ain’t no place for you, Mr. Sanford. Come away.”
Sanford raised his eyes and was about to speak, when the keeper threw
up his arms with a joyous shout and seized the glass. “There he is! I
see his cap! That’s Cap’n Joe! He’s holdin’ up his hands. Caleb’s
crawlin’ along the bottom; he’s reachin’ down an’ haulin’ Cap’n Joe
up. Now he’s on ’er keel.”
Sanford and Captain Brandt sprang to their feet, crowding close to the
lantern glass, their eyes fastened on the Dolly. Sanford’s hands were
trembling. Hot, quick tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped from
his chin. The joyful news had unnerved him more than the horror of the
previous moments. There was no doubt of its truth; he could see, even
with the naked eye, the captain lying flat on the boat’s keel. He
thought he could follow every line of his body,—never so precious as
now.
“He’s all right,” he said in a dazed way—“all right—all right,”
repeating it mechanically over and over to himself, as a child would
do. Then he turned and laid his hand on the keeper’s shoulder.
“Thank God, Tony! Thank God!”
The keeper’s hand closed tight in Sanford’s. For a moment he did not
speak.
“Almighty close shave, sir,” he said slowly in a broken whisper,
looking into Sanford’s eyes.
Captain Brandt’s face was radiant. “Might ’a’ knowed he’d come up
some’ers, sir. Didn’t I tell ye, ye couldn’t drown him? But where in
thunder has he been under water all this time?” he asked, with a laugh
that had the unshed tears of a strong man in it, and the exultation of
one just recovered from a fright that had almost unnerved him. The
laugh not only expressed his joy at the great relief, but carried with
it a reminder that he had never seriously doubted the captain’s
ability to save himself.
All eyes were now fastened on the rescuing smack. As she swept past
the capsized boat, her crew leaned far over the side, reached down and
caught two of the shipwrecked men, leaving one man still clinging to
the keel, the sea breaking over him every moment. Sanford took the
glass, and saw that this man was Lonny Bowles, and that Captain Joe,
now safe aboard the smack, was waving his cap to the second smack,
which hove to in answer. Presently the hailed smack rounded in,
lowered her mainsail, and hauled Lonny aboard. She then took the
overturned Dolly in tow, and made at once for the harbor. When this
was done, the first smack, with Captain Joe and Caleb on board, shook
a reef from its mainsail, turned about, and despite the storm laid a
straight course back to the Ledge.
[Illustration: “Thank God, Tony! Thank God!”]
This daring and apparently hopeless attempt of Captain Joe to carry
out his plan of going to the Ledge awoke a new anxiety in Sanford.
There was no longer the question of personal danger to the captain or
the men; the fishing-smack was, of course, a better sea boat than the
Dolly, but why make the trip at all when the pump had been lost from
the overturned boat, and no one could land at the Ledge? Even from
where they all stood in the lantern they could see the big rollers
flash white as they broke over the enrockment blocks, the spray
drenching the tops of the derricks. No small boat could live in such a
sea,—not even the life-boat at the Ledge.
As the incoming smack drew near, Sanford, followed by the keeper and
Captain Brandt, hurried down the spiral staircase and into the
keeper’s room below, where they drew on their coats and heavy boots,
and made their way to the lighthouse dock.
When she came within hailing distance, Captain Brandt mounted a spile
and shouted above the roar of the gale, “Bowles, ahoy! Anybody hurt,
Lonny?”
A man in a red shirt detached himself from among the group of men
huddled in the smack’s bow, stepped on the rail, and, putting his
hands to his mouth, trumpeted back, “No!”
“What’s the cap’n gone to the Ledge for?”
“Gone to set the pump!”
“Thought the pump was lost overboard!” cried Sanford.
“No, sir; cap’n dived under the Dolly an’ found it catched fast, an’
Caleb hauled it aboard. Cap’n tol’ me to tell ye that he’d hev it set
all right to-day, blow or no”—The last words were lost in the wind.
“Ain’t that jes’ like the cap’n?” shouted the keeper, with a loud
laugh, slapping his thigh with his hand. “That’s where he was when we
thought he was drownded,—he was a-divin’ fer that pump. Land o’
Moses, ain’t he a good un!”
Captain Brandt said nothing, but a smile of happy pride overspread his
face. Captain Joe was still his hero.
* * * * *
Sanford spent the afternoon between Aunty Bell’s kitchen and the
paraphernalia dock, straining his eyes seaward in search of an
incoming smack which would bring the captain. The wind had shifted to
the northwest, sweeping out the fog and piling the low clouds in
heaps. The rain had ceased, and a dash of pale lemon light shone above
the blue-gray sea.
About sundown his quick eye detected a tiny sail creeping in behind
Crotch Island. As it neared the harbor and he made out the lines of
the fishing-smack of the morning, a warm glow tingled through him; it
would not be long now before he had his hands on Captain Joe.
When the smack came bowling into the harbor under double reefs, her
wind-blown jib a cup, her sail a saucer, and rounded in as graceful as
a skater on the outer edge, Sanford’s hand was the first that touched
the captain’s as he sprang from the smack’s deck to the dock.
“Captain Joe,” he said. His voice broke as he spoke; all his love was
in his eyes. “Don’t ever do that again. I saw it all from the
lighthouse lantern. You have no right to risk your life this way.”
“’T ain’t nothin’, Mr. Sanford.” His great hand closed tight over that
of the young engineer. “It’s all right now, and the pump’s screwed
fast. Caleb had steam up on the h’ister when I left him on the Ledge.
Boom on the Dolly hadn’t ’a’ broke short off out there, we’d ’a’ been
there sooner.”
“We thought you were gone, once,” continued Sanford, his voice full of
anxiety, still holding to the captain’s hand as they walked toward the
house.
“Not in the Dolly, sir,” the captain answered in an apologetic tone,
as if he wanted to atone for the suffering he had caused his friend.
“She’s got wood enough in ’er to float anywheres. That’s what I took
’er out for.”
Aunty Bell met them at the kitchen door.
“I hearn ye was overboard,” she said quietly, no more stirred over the
day’s experience than if some child had stepped into a puddle and had
come in for a change of shoes. “Ye’re wet yet, be n’t ye?” patting his
big chest to make sure.
“Yes, guess so,” he answered carelessly, feeling his own arms as if to
satisfy himself as to the reason of his wife’s inquiry. “Got a dry
shirt?”
“Yes; got everything hangin’ there on a chair ’fore the kitchen fire,”
and she closed the door upon him and Sanford.
“Beats all, Mr. Sanford, don’t it?” the captain continued in short
sentences, broken by breathless pauses, as he stripped off his wet
clothes before the blazing fire, one jerk for the suspenders, another
for the trousers, Sanford, jubilant over the captain’s safety and
eager to do him any service, handing him the dry garments one after
another.
“Beats all, I say; don’t it, now? There’s that Cap’n Potts: been a
seaman, man an’ boy, all his life,”—here the grizzled wet head was
hidden for a moment as a clean flannel shirt was drawn over it,—“yet
he ain’t got sense ’nough to keep a boom from rottin’ ’board a
cat-boat,”—the head was up now, and Sanford, fumbling under the chin
whisker, was helping the captain with the top button,—“an’ snappin’
square off in a little gale o’ wind like that. There, thank ye, guess
that’ll do.”
When he had seated himself in his chair, his sturdy legs—stout and
tough as two dock-logs—stretched out before the fire, his rough hands
spread to the blaze, warming the big, strong body that had been
soaking wet for ten consecutive hours, Sanford took a seat beside him,
and, laying his hand on his knee, said in a gentle voice, “Why did you
risk your life for that pump, Captain Joe?”
“’Cause she acted so durned ornery,” he blurted out in an angry tone.
“Jes’ see what she did: gin out night ’fore last jes’ ’s we was
gittin’ ready to h’ist that big stretcher; kep’ me an’ Caleb up two
nights a-castin’ an’ borin’ on ’er out; then all of a sudden she
thought she’d upset an’ fool us. I tell ye, ye’ve got to take hold of
a thing like that good an’ early, or it’ll git away with ye.”
One hand was swung high over his head as if it had been a
sledge-hammer.
“Now she’ll stay put till I git through with her. I ain’t a-goin’ to
let no damned pump beat me!”