THE RECORD OF NICKLES, THE COOK
The yacht and the lighthouse tender were not the only boats bound for
the Ledge. The Screamer, under charge of a tug,—her sails would have
been useless in the still air,—was already clear of Keyport Light,
and heading for the landing-wharf a mile away. Captain Bob Brandt held
the tiller, and Captain Joe and Caleb leaned out of the windows of the
pilot-house of the towing tug. They wanted to be there to see if
Carleton “played any monkey tricks,” to quote Captain Brandt.
None of them had had cause to entertain a friendly spirit toward the
superintendent. It had often been difficult for Caleb to keep his
hands from Carleton’s throat since his experience with him under the
willows. As for Captain Brandt, he still remembered the day the level
was set, when Carleton had virtually given him the lie.
The Screamer arrived first; she made fast to the now completed dock,
and the tug dropped back in the eddy. Then the lighthouse tender came
alongside and hooked a line around the Screamer’s deck-cleats. The
yacht came last, lying outside the others. This made it necessary for
the passengers aboard the yacht to cross the deck of the tender, and
for those of both the yacht and the tender to cross the deck of the
Screamer, before stepping upon the completed masonry of the lighthouse
itself.
Nothing could have suited Mrs. Leroy better than this enforced
intermingling of guests and visitors. The interchanges of courtesy
established at once a cordiality which augured well for the day’s
outcome and added another touch of sunshine to its happiness, and so
she relaxed none of her efforts to propitiate the gods.
It is worthy of note that Carleton played no part in the joyous
programme of the day. He sprang ashore as soon as the tender made fast
to the Screamer’s side (he had met the party of engineers at the
railroad depot, and had gone with them to Little Gull Light,—their
first stopping-place), and began at once his work of “superintending”
with a vigor and alertness never seen in him before, and, to quote
Nickles, the cook, who was watching the whole performance from the
shanty window, “with more airs than a Noank goat with a hoop-skirt.”
The moment the major’s foot was firmly planted upon the Ledge a marked
change was visible in him. The straight back, head up, rear-admiral
manner, which had distinguished him, gave way to one of a thoughtful
repose. Engineering problems began to absorb him. Leaving Hardy and
Smearly to help the older ladies pick their way over the
mortar-incrusted platforms and up and down the rude ladders to the top
rim of masonry, he commenced inspecting the work with the eye of a
skilled mechanic. He examined carefully the mortar joints of the
masonry; squinted his eye along the edges of the cut stones to see if
they were true; turned it aloft, taking in the system of derricks,
striking one with the palm of his hand and listening for the
vibration, to assure himself of its stability. And he asked questions
in a way that left no doubt in the minds of the men that he was past
grand master in the art of building lighthouses.
All but one man.
This doubter was Lonny Bowles, whom the Pocomokian had cared for in
the old warehouse hospital the night of the explosion. Bowles had
quietly dogged the major’s steps over the work, in the hope of being
recognized. At last the good-natured lineaments of the red-shirted
quarryman fastened themselves upon the major’s remembrance.
“My dear suh!” he broke out, as he jumped down from a huge
coping-stone and grasped Lonny’s hand. “Of co’se I remember you. I
sincerely hope you’re all right again,” stepping back and looking him
over with an expression of real pride and admiration.
“Oh yes, I’m purty hearty, thank ye,” said Bowles, laughing as he
hitched his sleeves up his arms, bared to the elbow. “How’s things
gone ’long o’ yerself?”
The major expressed his perfect satisfaction with life in its every
detail, and was about to compliment Bowles on the wonderful progress
of the work so largely due to his efforts, when the man at the
hoisting-engine interrupted with, “Don’t stand there now lalligaggin’,
Lonny. Where ye been this half hour? Hurry up with that monkey-wrench.
Do you want this drum to come off?” Lonny instantly turned his
attention to the work. When he had given the last turn to the
endangered nut, the man said, “Who’s the duck with the bobtail coat,
Lonny?”
“Oh, he’s one o’ the boss’s city gang. Fust time I see him he come
inter th’ warehouse when we was stove up. I thought he was a sawbones
till I see him a-fetchin’ water fur th’ boys. Then I thought he was a
preach till he began to swear. But he ain’t neither one; he’s an
out-an’-out ol’ sport, he is, every time, an’ a good un. He’s struck
it rich up here, I guess, from th’ way he’s boomin’ things with them
Leroy folks,”—which conviction seemed to be shared by the men around
him, now that they were assured of the major’s identity. Many of them
remembered the nankeen and bombazine suit which the Pocomokian wore on
that fatal day, and the generally disheveled appearance that he
presented the following morning. The present change in his attire was
therefore the more incomprehensible.
During all this time, Sanford, with the assistance of Captain Joe and
Caleb, was adjusting his transit, in order that he might measure for
the committee the exact difference between the level shown on the
plans and the level found in the concrete base. In this adjustment,
the major, who had now joined the group, took the deepest interest,
discoursing most learnedly, to the officers about him, upon the
marvels of modern science, punctuating his remarks every few minutes
with pointed allusions to his dear friend Henry, “that Archimedes of
the New World,” who in this the greatest of all his undertakings had
eclipsed all former achievements. The general listened with an amused
smile, in which the whole committee joined before long.
Either General Barton’s practiced eye forestalled any need of the
instrument, or Carleton had already fully posted him as to which side
of the circle was some inches too high, for he asked, with some
severity:—
“Isn’t the top of that concrete base out of level, Mr. Sanford?”
“Yes, sir; some inches too high near the southeast derrick,” replied
Sanford promptly.
“How did that occur?”
“I should prefer you to ask the superintendent,” said Sanford quietly.
Mrs. Leroy, who was standing a short distance away on a dry plank that
Sanford had put under her feet, her ears alert, stopped talking to
Smearly and turned her head. She did not want to miss a word.
“What have you to say, Mr. Carleton? Did you give any orders to raise
that level?” The general looked over his glasses at the
superintendent.
Carleton had evidently prepared himself for this ordeal, and had
carefully studied his line of answers. As long as he kept the written
requirements under the contract he was safe.
“If I understand my instructions, sir, I am not here to give orders.
The plans show what is to be done.” He spoke in a low, almost gentle
voice, and with a certain deference of manner which no one had ever
seen in him before, and which Sanford felt was even more to be dreaded
than his customary bluster.
Captain Joe stepped closer to Sanford’s side, and Caleb and Captain
Bob Brandt, who stood on the outside of the circle of officers grouped
around the tripod, leaned forward, listening intently. They, too, had
noticed the change in Carleton’s manner. The other men dropped their
shovels and tools, and edged up, not obtrusively, but so as to
overhear everything.
“Is this the reason you have withheld the certificate, of which the
contractor complains?” asked the general, with a tone in his voice as
of a judge interrogating a witness.
Carleton bowed his head meekly in assent. “I can’t sign for work that
’s done wrong, sir.”
Captain Joe made a movement as if to speak, when Sanford, checking him
with a look, began, “The superintendent is right so far as he goes,
general, but there is another clause in the contract which he seems to
forget. I’ll quote it,” drawing an important-looking document from his
pocket and spreading it out on the top of a cement barrel: “‘Any
dispute arising between the United States engineer, or his
superintendent, and the contractor, shall be decided by the former,
and his decision shall be final.’ If the level of this concrete base
does not conform to the plans, there is no one to blame but the
superintendent himself.”
Sanford’s flashing eye and rising voice had attracted the attention of
the ladies as well as that of their escorts. They ceased talking and
played with the points of their parasols, tracing little diagrams in
the cement dust, preserving a strict neutrality, like most people
overhearing a quarrel in which they have no interest, but who are
alert to lose no move in the contest. Sanford would have liked less
publicity in the settlement of the matter, and so expressed himself in
a quick glance toward the guests. This anxiety was instantly seen by
the major, who, with a tact that Sanford had not given him credit for,
led the ladies away out of hearing on pretense of showing them some of
the heavy masonry.
The engineer-in-chief looked curiously at Carleton, and the awakened
light of a new impression gleamed in his eye. Sanford’s confident
manner and Carleton’s momentary agitation over Sanford’s statement,
upsetting for an instant his lamblike reserve, evidently indicated
something hidden behind this dispute which until then had not come to
the front.
“I’ll take any blame that ’s coming to me,” said Carleton, his
meekness merging into a dogged, half-imposed-on tone, “but I can’t be
responsible for other folks’ mistakes. I set that level myself two
months ago, and left the bench-marks for ’em to work up to. When I
come out next time they’d altered them. I told ’em it wouldn’t do, and
they’d have to take up what concrete they’d set and lower the level
again. They said they was behind and wanted to catch up, that it made
no difference anyhow, and they wouldn’t do it.”
General Barton turned to Sanford and was about to speak, when a voice
rang out clear and sharp, “That’s a lie!”
Everybody looked about for the speaker. If a bomb had exploded above
their heads, the astonishment could not have been greater.
Before any one could speak Captain Bob Brandt forced his way into the
middle of the group. His face was flushed with anger, his lower lip
was quivering. “I say it again. That’s a lie, and you know it,” he
said calmly, pointing his finger at Carleton, whose cheek paled at
this sudden onslaught. “This ain’t my job, gentlemen,” and he faced
General Barton and the committee, “an’ it don’t make no difference to
me whether it gits done ’r not. I’m hired here ’long with my sloop
a-layin’ there at the wharf, an’ I git my pay. But I’ve been here all
summer, an’ I stood by when this ’ere galoot you call a superintendent
sot this level; and when he says Cap’n Joe didn’t do the work as he
ordered it he lies like a thief, an’ I don’t care who hears it. Ask
Cap’n Joe Bell and Caleb West, a-standin’ right there ’longside o’ ye:
they’ll gin it to ye straight; they’re that kind.”
Barton was an old man and accustomed to the respectful deference of a
government office, but he was also a keen observer of human nature.
The expression on the skipper’s face and on the faces of the others
about him was too fearless to admit of a moment’s doubt of their
sincerity.
Carleton shrugged his shoulders as if it were to be expected that
Sanford’s men would stand by him. Then he said, with a half sneer at
Captain Brandt, “Five dollars goes a long ways with you fellers.” The
cat had unconsciously uncovered its claws.
Brandt sprang forward with a wicked look in his eye, when the general
raised his hand.
“Come, men, stop this right away.” There was a tone in the chief
engineer’s voice which impelled obedience. “We are here to find out
who is responsible for this error. I am surprised, Mr. Sanford,”
turning almost fiercely upon him, “that a man of your experience did
not insist on a written order for this change of plan. While six
inches over an area of this size does not materially injure the work,
you are too old a contractor to alter a level to one which you admit
now was wrong, and which at the time you knew was wrong, without some
written order. It violates the contract.”
Here Nickles, the cook, who had been craning his neck out of the
shanty window so as not to lose a word of the talk, withdrew it so
suddenly that one of the men standing by the door hurried into the
shanty, thinking something unusual was the matter.
“I have never been able to get a written order from this
superintendent for any detail of the work since he has been here,”
said Sanford in a positive tone, “and he has never raised his hand to
help us. What the cause of his enmity is I do not know. We have all of
us tried to treat him courteously and follow his orders whenever it
was possible to do so. He insisted on this change after both my master
diver, Caleb West here, Captain Joe Bell, and others of my best men
had protested against it, and we had either to stop work and appeal to
the Board, and so lose the summer’s work and be liable to the
government for non-completion on time, or obey him. I took the latter
course, and you can see the result. It was my only way out of the
difficulty.”
At this instant there came a crash which sounded like breaking china,
evidently in the shanty, and a cloud of white dust, the contents of a
partly empty flour-barrel, sifted out through the open window. The
general turned his head in inquiry, and, seeing nothing unusual,
continued:—
“You should have stopped work, sir, and appealed. The government does
not want its work done in a careless, unworkmanlike way, and will not
pay for it.” His voice had a tone in it that sent a pang of anxiety to
Mrs. Leroy’s heart.
Carleton smiled grimly. He was all right, he said to himself. Nobody
believed the Yankee skipper.
Before Sanford could gather his wits in reply the shanty door was
flung wide open, and Nickles backed out, carrying in his arms a pine
door, higher and wider than himself. He had lifted it from its hinges
in the pantry, upsetting everything about it.
“I guess mebbe I ain’t been a-watchin’ this all summer fur nothin’,
gents,” he said, planting the door squarely before the general. “You
kin read it fur yerself,—it’s ’s plain ’s print. If ye want what ye
call an ‘order,’ here it is large as life.”
It was the once clean pine door of the shanty, on which Sanford and
the men had placed their signatures in blue pencil the day the level
was fixed, and Carleton, defying Sanford, had said it should “go that
way” or he would stop the work!
General Barton adjusted his eyeglasses and began reading the
inscription. A verbatim record of Carleton’s instructions was before
him. The other members of the Board crowded around, reading it in
silence.
General Barton replaced his gold-rimmed eyeglasses carefully in their
case, and for a moment looked seaward in an abstracted sort of way.
The curiously inscribed door had evidently made a deep impression upon
him.
“I had forgotten about that record, general,” said Sanford, “but I am
very glad it has been preserved. It was made at the time, so we could
exactly carry out the superintendent’s instructions. As to its truth,
I should prefer you to ask the men who signed it. They are all here
around you.”
The general looked again at Captain Joe and Caleb. There was no
questioning their integrity. Theirs were faces that disarmed suspicion
at once.
“Are these your signatures?” he asked, pointing to the scrawls in blue
lead pencil subscribed under Sanford’s.
“They are, sir,” said Captain Joe and Caleb almost simultaneously;
Caleb answering with a certain tone of solemnity, as if he were still
in government service and under oath, lifting his hat as he spoke. Men
long in government employ have this sort of unconscious awe in the
presence of their superiors.
“Make a copy of it,” said the general curtly to the secretary of the
Board. Then he turned on his heel, crossed the Screamer’s deck, and
entered the cabin of the tender, where he was followed by the other
members of the committee.
Ten minutes later the steward of the tender called Carleton. The men
looked after him as he picked his way over the platforms and across
the deck of the sloop. His face was flushed, and a nervous twitching
of the muscles of his mouth showed his agitation over the summons. The
apparition of the pantry door, they thought, had taken the starch out
of him.
Mrs. Leroy crossed to Sanford’s side and whispered anxiously, “What do
you think, Henry?”
“I don’t know yet, Kate. Barton is a gruff, exact man, and a martinet,
but he hasn’t a dishonest hair on his head. Wait.”
The departure of the engineers aboard the tender, followed almost
immediately by that of the superintendent, left the opposition, so to
speak, unrepresented. Those of the ladies who were on sufficiently
intimate terms with Sanford to mention the fact at all, and who,
despite the major’s efforts to lead them out of range, had heard every
word of the discussion, expressed the hope that the affair would come
out all right. One, a Mrs. Corson, said in a half-querulous tone that
she thought they ought to be ashamed of themselves to find any fault,
after all the hard work he had done. Jack and Smearly consulted apart.
They were somewhat disturbed, but still believed that Sanford would
win his case.
To the major, however, the incident had a far deeper and much more
significant meaning.
“It’s a part of their infernal system, Henry,” he said in a
sympathetic voice, now really concerned for his friend’s welfare,—“a
trick of the damnable oligarchy, suh, that is crushing out the life of
the people. It is the first time since the wah that I have come as
close as this to any of the representatives of this government, and it
will be the last, suh.”
Before Sanford could soothe the warlike spirit of his champion, the
steward of the tender again appeared, and, touching his cap, said the
committee wished to see Mr. Sanford.
The young engineer excused himself to those about him and followed the
steward, Mrs. Leroy looking after him with a glance of anxiety as he
crossed the deck of the Screamer,—an anxiety which Sanford tried to
relieve by an encouraging wave of his hand.
As Sanford entered the saloon Carleton was just leaving it, hat in
hand. He did not raise his eyes. His face was blue-white. Little
flecks of saliva were sticking in the corners of his mouth, as if his
breath were dry.
General Barton sat at the head of the saloon table. The other members
of the Board were seated below him.
“Mr. Sanford,” said the general, “we have investigated the differences
between yourself and the superintendent with the following result:
First, the committee has accepted the work as it stands, believing in
the truthfulness of yourself and your men, confirmed by a record which
it could not doubt. Second, the withheld certificate will be signed
and checks forwarded to you as soon as the necessary papers can be
prepared. Third, Superintendent Carleton has been relieved from duty
at Shark Ledge Light.”