AT SETUCKIT POINT.
“And there she is!” said Captain Titcomb, standing beside Bradley in
the bow of the _Lizzie_. “There she is, just where we left her. Here’s
hopin’ she don’t quit till we want her to. Run along under her stern,
Barney; tide’s goin’ out, but there’s water enough there.”
It was the morning of the second day following the securing of the
wrecking contract. The _Lizzie_, with Bradley, the Captain, and Alvin
Bearse aboard, had left the Orham wharf an hour or more before. They
had stopped at the Point to pick up Peleg Myrick and Bill Taylor,
the new hands, whose services the Captain had secured without much
trouble. The only difficulty had been in persuading Mr. Myrick to
leave Skeezicks at the shanty. This had been overcome, however, and
the shivering pup, locked in the room that was Peleg’s sitting-room,
dining-room and kitchen, had howled a sad farewell through the crack
of the door. His master had left a liberal supply of food to console
his pet, and had explained the situation thoroughly to the dog before
locking him up.
“He feels kind of bad now,” said Peleg, looking sorrowfully back at
the weather-beaten shanty, from which faint, muffled howls floated in
dismal cadences, “but I’ve told him that I felt’s though I’d ought to
take the job, and he’ll git over it by and by. Jest like a human, that
dog is, jest exactly.”
They tried to persuade the weather prophet to leave his concertina
behind, but that was a trifle too much; Peleg brought it with him,
wrapped in an old sweater.
Barney ran the little wrecking schooner under the tilted stern of the
_Ruth Ginn_, and Bradley sprang from the shrouds to the rail of the
stranded craft. Then, one by one, all but Barney, who stayed behind to
look after the _Lizzie_, they clambered aboard the wreck. Most of the
hard pine boards that formed the deck-load were in place, having been
lashed well and being out of the reach of the heaviest seas, which had
spent their force on the stern and after portion of the vessel.
“So fur, so good,” observed the Captain, cheerfully. “Now, Alvin, you
go below and see how things look there. Peleg, try her with the pumps;
let’s see if she’s leakin’ much. Brad, come here and take a squint at
this windlass.”
The patent windlass was in good condition, and so also, to their
delight, was the donkey engine. Peleg, working manfully at the pump,
reported that she had some water in her, but that it didn’t “seem to be
gainin’ none.”
“That’s all right!” said the Captain. “If she ain’t a sieve, she’ll
do. She’s plumb full of lumber and you can’t sink that. Barney!” he
hailed, “run over into the deep water at the lee of the shoal there,
and anchor. Then take the dory and come aboard; we want to git to work.”
Then Bradley got steam up in the donkey engine and the big anchor of
the _Ruth Ginn_, attached to a heavy cable, was lowered carefully until
its shank rested across the stern of the dory. To this main cable, near
its middle, were spliced two others just as heavy; to each of these
another anchor was made fast. The dories were rowed out almost at a
right angle from the wreck into the deep water. Then the anchors were
thrown overboard and a three-fingered iron hand, with its spread talons
deep in the sand, held the lumber schooner fast.
“Now, Brad,” commanded the Captain, “haul that line taut.”
Bradley started his engine, the windlass turned, and the cable, that
had hung loose from the bow of the wreck, lifted from the water and
tightened till it groaned.
“All she’ll stand, is it?” asked the skipper. “Good! make her fast.
They say tide’ll wait for no man, so I guess we’ll have to do the next
best thing and wait for the tide. Now boys!” as the men climbed aboard
from the dories, “git to work and strip her.”
It is always the tide at Setuckit. The tide, tearing around the Point,
day after day, year after year, has scoured out the narrow ship channel
and piled up the shoals. The tide, catching the unwary coasting
vessel or homeward-bound ship driven into its clutches by its ally
the on-shore gale, coaxes the struggling victim in, little by little,
until, all at once, it grips her in triumph and throws her bodily upon
the soft, treacherous sand bars. And there, unless the wreckers come to
the rescue, she lies until the next storm, when wind and tide tear her
into fragments and leave nothing but a sunken, ragged hulk to be blown
up, eventually, by the men employed by the government to keep the ocean
highways clear.
But, curiously enough, the same tide that forces the vessels on the
shoals is the wreckers’ greatest aid in getting them afloat again. A
steam tug is rarely of much use in these waters. No pull that these
stout little workers can give is sufficient to start a heavy craft with
its keel deeply buried in the sand. Anchors and cables, and the tide,
do the business, if it is done at all.
Bradley and the Captain knew that they could not hope to get out all
the lumber in the hold of the _Ruth Ginn_ if she was allowed to lie in
her present exposed position. One more gale and she would be almost
certain to break up. Their hope was to lighten her by getting rid of
her deck load and to work her off the shoal into deep water and then
tow her up to Orham harbor, where she could be unloaded at their
leisure.
She lay almost broadside to the shoal, but not quite. Her bow was
well up on the sand, but her stern overhung the edge of the Boneyard,
which, on that side, was, as Captain Titcomb said, “steep as the back
of a barn.” The cable, tight as the steam windlass could draw it, led
off from her bow to the spot where the anchors were planted under many
fathoms of water. Where the tide turned, its pressure against the
schooner would bring her to bear on the cable with a tremendous pull.
The waves, growing larger as the water deepened, should, if their
plan was a good one, loosen her keel in the sand, and every inch she
gave the cable would retain. The more she loosened, the easier she
would move. The slack thus made in the cable would be taken up by the
windlass. She might gain but a foot a day for awhile, but, some day or
other, if the weather held fair, she would have worked herself through
the sand and clear of the shoal.
They stripped her, cutting away her tangled ropes and sails and taking
them aboard the _Lizzie_. Everything movable, except of course the
lumber, they transferred thus or threw overboard. It was a hard job
and took them all day. Bradley was a tired man when he reached home
that night, but he had to answer countless questions put to him by the
interested “old maids.” He saw Gus for a moment or two and reported
progress. Then he went to bed.
Next morning was clear and calm and they were delighted to find that
the wrecked schooner had gained a little and that the cable was slacker
than they left it. They tightened it again, with the windlass, and then
set to work throwing overboard the lumber on the deck. They rigged a
tackle on the stump of the foremast and, with the donkey engine, swung
great bundles of the planks overboard, while Alvin and Barney, standing
on the floating timber, with the water swashing around the knees of
their fishermen’s boots, made it into rafts to be towed up to Orham.
Here it was that the partners appreciated the lack of an engine on the
_Lizzie_.
“I tell you one thing, Brad!” exclaimed the Captain, pausing to cut a
splinter from his thumb with an enormous jackknife which had seen years
of service, “if we make good on a few more jobs like this, we’ll have
a new schooner built for us if we have to run in debt for it till we
can’t touch bottom. This pitchin’ hay with a two-tined table-fork ain’t
my style.”
That night they hired Ira Sparrow’s fishing boat, the _You and I_,
to tow the lumber rafts. She was a stout little craft with a naphtha
engine, and, although not nearly so efficient as a tug, did the work
after a fashion and was far and away cheaper. By hiring her they added
Ira to their force.
For eight days they labored steadily; except on Sunday, when they
merely sailed down to take up the slack on the cable. The lumber on the
deck had been rafted to Orham and they had begun to get out that in
the hold. The _Ruth Ginn_ was moving slowly through the sand and every
day showed more and more gain. The partners were in high spirits.
“She’s a-comin’, Brad! she’s a-comin’!” exulted Captain Titcomb. “Peleg
says clear and fine for a fortni’t yit. We’ve got out enough now to pay
expenses, but that don’t count. What we’re after is to git it all, and,
if somethin’ don’t bust, we’ll do it.”
The whole town was interested in the work. Bradley was waylaid by
dozens of people every night. The prophets of calamity had already
begun to hedge, although, of course, they were agreed that, if success
did come, it would do so because the partners were lucky and had had
good weather. “Ez Titcomb and a fool for luck,” was the way Captain
Jabez Bailey put it.
The old maids grew more exultant with every evening’s report.
“Ain’t it splendid, Prissy?” Miss Tempy would cry, clapping her hands
and waving the dishcloth. “How much did you make to-day, Bradley?”
Gus was just as much pleased, but more philosophical.
“I knew you’d win, Brad,” she said.
The sisters were very anxious to see how the work was done.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Miss Tempy. “I’d give anything to be down at the
Point and watch you work. Seems’s if I _must_ go!”
“You wouldn’t be able to see much without a glass,” was Bradley’s
answer. “We’re a mile and a half off the Point.”
“Father’s glass is up garret. Oh, Brad! _can’t_ we go?”
They were so eager and the weather was so warm and pleasant that
Bradley began to think it might be possible to arrange for a picnic at
the Point. He hesitated about suggesting it to the Captain, however,
because he was not quite sure how the latter would like spending a
day with the ladies whom he had so unceremoniously dropped from his
visiting list. But his first hint was received with great cordiality.
“Sure thing!” said Captain Titcomb. “Mighty good idea, Brad. I ain’t
been to a beach picnic for I don’t know when. Let’s see; who’ll we ask?
The old maids, of course; and Gusty Baker, maybe--what do you think
about havin’ her, Brad? Oh! all right; you needn’t look at me like
that. And p’raps Eri Hedge and Perez Ryder and Cap’n Jerry might come.
They’d be comp’ny for Prissy and Tempy. Eri’s a great feller to train
and carry on and he’d enjoy a cruise like this. Then we ought to have
some girls to be comp’ny for Gusty. She won’t want to hang ’round the
beach all day and do nothin’ but squint through a spyglass at you, so
don’t flatter yourself she will. Might ask Georgiana Bailey, so’s to
give tone to the outfit? No? Well, I don’t care much for high society,
myself. How about that Hopkins girl--Clara, seems to me her name was?”
So the excursion was decided upon for the very next day, and that
evening Bradley went about issuing invitations. He kept closely to the
Captain’s list and Perez Ryder was the only one of those suggested who
felt obliged to decline. Captain Perez was caretaker at a big summer
house on the “cliff road” and, as the family was coming from the city
in a day or so, there were preparations to be made.
“Peleg said good weather for to-day,” declared Captain Titcomb next
morning, when laden with baskets and boxes, the excursion party
gathered at the wharf. “Thinks I, ‘My son, you don’t know what you’re
prophesyin’ against: if a picnic can’t raise a shower then nothin’
will.’ But here ’tis, fine as a fiddle, spite of the handicap. No use
talkin’, Peleg’s got the Old Farmer’s Almanac beat a mile. Land sake,
Prissy! what you got in that clothes basket?”
“’Taint a clothes basket, Cap’n Ezra. How you do talk! It’s jest a
plain lunch basket, and there’s things to eat in it, if you must know.”
“Things to _eat_! Say, Brad, you didn’t invite this crowd for a week’s
cruise, did you? There’s enough in that basket to vittle a man-o’-war.
And Tempy’s got one too! What’s that other thing you’ve got, Tempy--a
spyglass?”
“Yes; one that b’longed to father. We’re goin’ to watch you and Bradley
at work on the wreck.”
“Crimus_tee_! Did you hear that, Brad? You’ve got to behave yourself
to-day. No drinkin’ out of the jug, and then chasin’ Peleg with a
hatchet; you’ve got to keep sober.”
And, winking at Captain Eri, who was silently enjoying Miss Tempy’s
horrified expression, the Captain led the way aboard the _Lizzie_.
They had a fair wind down and the sail was a jolly one. Arriving at
the Point, they landed the visitors, and picked up Bill Taylor and Mr.
Myrick. Miss Tempy begged to be allowed to stay on board and go off
with them to the wreck, but the Captain wouldn’t hear of it.
“Last time I took a woman out back of the P’int here,” he said, “was
over ten years ago. She was a minister’s wife and her husband was with
her. We was tryin’ for bluefish, and when he’d heave his line she’d
screech like a foghorn and beg of him not to git drownded for _her_
sake. Way I looked at it, she was his best excuse for wantin’ to _be_
drownded. Well, we got out where ’twas pretty rugged, and every time
the boat rolled she’d jump and hold out her arms to me like she was
goin’ to grab me ’round the neck. Bein’ a bashful man, I pretty nigh
had heart disease ’fore we got ashore. ’Course you wouldn’t do nothin’
like that, Tempy, but----”
“The idea!” exclaimed Miss Tempy, turning very red.
“Reminds me of a woman I took out sailin’ once,” observed Captain Eri.
“She kept sayin’ she was havin’ an ‘adorable time,’ and when ’twan’t
that ’twas, ‘Oh, Cap’n Hedge! are you _sure_ it’s perfectly safe?’ or
‘Cap’n, you’re sartin you know how to handle the boat, ain’t you?’
Fin’lly she looks down the centre-board well, throws up both hands and
whoops, ‘I knew it! I knew it! we’re sinkin’! There’s a hole right
through the bottom of the boat and it’s full of water!’”
So Miss Tempy gave up the idea of going off to the wreck and contented
herself with the possession of the spyglass. Captain Eri and Captain
Jerry, laden with the lunch baskets, led the way up to the big empty
shanty that had sheltered thirty men in the old days when Point fishing
was a paying industry, and the _Lizzie_, with the workers aboard,
headed for the _Ruth Ginn_.
Ira Sparrow, in the _You and I_, was there already, and the “chug!
chug!” of his naphtha engine was heard as he came rushing to meet them.
“Brad! Cap’n Ez!” he hailed, as soon as they were in shouting distance.
“She’s shifted like time in the night! I swan, I b’lieve we can git her
off this tide!”
This was such unexpected good news, for they had figured on another
week at least, that the partners could scarcely believe it.
“Are you sure?” shouted Bradley, leaning over the _Lizzie’s_ bow.
“Pretty nigh sure. Look for yourself.”
They shot up to the wreck, to find the cable, that had been left tight
and rigid, hanging loose. An inexperienced eye could see that the
lumber schooner had changed her position. Her bow was now almost in a
line with the edge of the shoal and, even in the slack water of the
last of the ebb, she was rocking appreciably in the cradle her hull had
made in the sand beneath it.
“Great scissors to grind!” shouted Captain Titcomb. “She’ll do it as
sure as I’m a foot high! Tumble aboard there, boys! lively!”
They clambered up the side and fell to work like sharks around a dead
whale. Bradley got up steam in the donkey engine. As soon as possible
they started the windlass and hauled the cable taut.
“She feels it, boy; she feels it!” cried the Captain. “Give it to her!
every pound she’ll stand. Now, then,” he added, “while we’re waitin’
for the tide to turn we might’s well roust out a little more of the
cargo. No use to lay back and let Providence do it all. The Lord helps
them that helps themselves, as the darkey said when he found the
hen-house door unlocked. Hatches off, men! dive into it there!”
They rigged the blocks and tackle and began swinging bundles of
mahogany strips from the hold and over the side. The tide turned and
the water on the shoal grew deeper. The _Ruth Ginn_ rocked in her sand
cradle; every little while they hove taut on the cable in order to take
up every inch of slack.
It was exhilarating, exciting work, this fight with old ocean, and
Bradley and the Captain gloried in the sheer joy of it. They were
winning, and winning not only a goodly sum of money, but the first big
prize that would demonstrate their ability to carry through larger and
more important contracts. The forenoon passed.
“They expected us ashore for dinner long ago,” panted the skipper,
standing by the hatch, his coat and cap off and the wind blowing his
hair this way and that; “but they’ll have to take it out in expectin’.
I wouldn’t quit now if the Pres’dent of the United States was waitin’
for me and the turkey gittin’ cold; hey, Brad?”
“I should say not!” replied the junior partner, his eyes snapping.
“What’s that? Didn’t she move then?”
“Cap’n Ez!” bellowed Ira, from the _You and I_. “She’s movin’! come up
on your cable.”
The Captain jumped to the windlass and Bradley to his engine. The cable
tightened, and slowly, inch by inch, wound back over the windlass
barrel. From beneath the _Ruth Ginn_ came a sliding, grating sound, the
most welcome sound in the world to the wreckers. Bearse, picking up a
heavy coil of rope from the deck, tossed it to Ira.
“That’s the stuff, Alvin!” roared the Captain, approvingly. “Make it
fast in the bows. Now, Ira! put your power onto that line.”
The _You and I_ leaped out into deep water and, with her naphtha engine
coughing furiously, pulled doggedly at the new tow line. The grating
under the keel of the lumber schooner grew louder; she quivered from
stem to stern. The cable crept inboard faster and faster.
Then there came a shake, a roll that caused Mr. Myrick to lose his
footing and tumble into the scuppers, and, with a triumphant wallow,
the _Ruth Ginn_ slid off the shoal. And from her deck, and from that of
the _You and I_, went up a yell that scared the gulls fishing away over
on the Razorback.
They drew her into the channel, well out of danger, and anchored her
firmly, bow and stern.
“There!” said the Captain, triumphantly. “She’ll stay there till we can
get a tug from Vineyard Haven. We’ll go ashore and telephone from the
life-saving station for one this minute. No more work to-day, boys.
They’re waitin’ dinner for us, and we’ve earned it.”
That the good news was already known on the beach was plain. On the
roof of the big shanty someone--it was Captain Eri--was seated, waving
a flag made of a coat tied to a weir pole. As the _Lizzie_ and the _You
and I_ ran into the cove the picnic party came hurrying to meet them.
“Now then!” shouted Captain Jerry, waving his hat; “three cheers for
the wreckers! Hooray!”
And Miss Tempy’s handkerchief sailed off on the breeze as she let go of
it in her excitement.
The Captain ran up to the life-saving station to telephone to Sam Hardy
an order to wire Vineyard Haven to send a tug at once. When he came
back dinner was ready.
It was a tiptop shore dinner; baked clams, clam chowder, fried
plaice-fish, and all the pies, apple puffs and cake that had filled the
lunch baskets. Bradley was too excited to eat much and the old maids
were a little worried in consequence.
While the ladies washed the dishes the men smoked and spun yarns. It
was after three o’clock when they finished. Then they dragged Peleg
Myrick into the shanty and made him play the concertina, while they
danced “Hull’s Victory,” “Speed the Plough,” and the ever popular
“Virginia Reel.” There were not partners enough to go around, so some
of the men danced together. Captain Titcomb, in his rubber boots,
offered his arm with a flourish to Captain Eri and the “cuts” and
“double shuffles” that the two shellbacks introduced into that reel
were wonderful, although they very nearly broke up the dance.
“We won’t have supper till seven o’clock,” announced Captain Titcomb.
“Come on, girls and boys! who wants to go over to the lighthouse?”
They all did, or nearly all; Gus was standing by the back window,
looking at the sea, and she did not reply.
“Ain’t Brad goin’?” asked Miss Prissy anxiously, turning as she was
about to leave the shanty, with Captain Jerry as her escort.
“Leave Brad alone a minute,” called Captain Titcomb, who was walking
with Clara Hopkins. “He wants to git his bearin’s, I guess. You women
folks have pretty nigh talked his head off. He’ll be along pretty soon.”
They went away and Bradley, for the first time, was alone with Gus. The
old maids had given him no chance to do more than speak the barest word
with her before, and now that he had the opportunity, he was almost
afraid to begin. She must have known that he was there, but she did not
turn her head.
The silence was very awkward. Bradley broke it, after what seemed a
long time.
“Gus,” he said.
She turned then, and, after glancing at his face, spoke hurriedly.
“Oh!” she exclaimed; “they’ve gone and left us. Come; let’s catch them!”
But he stopped her before she reached the door.
“Gus,” he said, seizing her hand and holding it; “haven’t you got
anything to say to me?”
She did not look at him. “What shall I say?” she asked. “What do you
want me to say?”
“Why, I thought you’d be glad that I’ve got the schooner off. I thought
you’d say--the others said----”
“I _am_ glad, very glad. And very proud. But I knew you would succeed.
Hadn’t we better go?”
But he would not let her go.
“I hoped you’d say more than that,” he said, disappointedly. “I was
dreadfully blue the other night when Sam was there. I thought that,
after all, perhaps I was making a fool of myself in giving up the city
and trying to win out down here. It looked so small beside the great
jobs Sam talked about. But when you spoke to me on the steps and told
me you believed in me, it all changed, and I swore to myself that I
_would_ win, because you wanted me to. Gus, do you really care? Are you
really glad?”
Then she turned to him and he saw that her eyes were wet.
“What do you want me to say?” she whispered. “That I am more glad than
I’ve ever been in my life before, and so proud of you, _so_ proud
because you were brave enough to make your fight and win it in the
face of the whole village? And so ashamed of myself because I didn’t
encourage you as I ought when you first told me? I can say all that,
Brad, and truly mean it.”
“But Gus--oh! it’s no use! that isn’t enough. I haven’t got any money,
and I’ve only begun in my work, and I may fail, after all; but Gus,
will you wait for me? Do you care enough for me to wait and hope with
me, and marry me some day when I really win? Do you?”
He held her hand in both of his and waited, breathless, for the answer.
But she did not give it; instead she looked at the window and through
it at the sand dunes and waving beach grass and the blue sea beyond.
And Bradley, gazing at her face, saw the tears overflow her eyelids and
roll down her cheeks.
He turned white, and a great dread came over him. “Gus, don’t
you--_can’t_ you care for me?” he begged.
And then she turned, and, leaning her head upon his shoulder, cried
heartily and without restraint. “Why did you ask me? Why _did_ you?”
she sobbed.
“Because I had to. Gus, don’t you love me?”
“Oh, Brad! I don’t know. I think I do, but I’m not certain. I’m very,
very proud of you, and I believe in you, but, oh, dear! I’m afraid of
myself. I’m afraid of my temper; afraid I may change; afraid I don’t
really love you as much as I ought to.”
“There isn’t anyone else, is there?”
She smiled, tearfully. “No, Brad, there isn’t anyone else.”
“Then won’t you try to say yes? Perhaps you’ll learn to care for me.
Won’t you say yes, and try, dear?”
“Do you want me to say it, now that you understand just how I feel?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to take me just as I am--liking you better than anybody
else in the world, but not--perhaps, not really loving you as it seems
to me a girl ought to love the man who is going to marry her?”
“Yes.”
“I’m a queer girl, Brad. Grandma says I’m like her best china
teacups--I must be handled carefully or there’ll be a smash. I guess
that’s so. I don’t trust myself; I change my mind five times a day. Do
you want me to say yes, in spite of all this?”
“I do.”
“Then I _will_ say it; and I will try to be what you would like to have
me.”
He bent his head and kissed her, and just then came a thunderous knock
on the door.
“Brad,” whispered Captain Titcomb, through the crack; “are you there?
I’ve come back after Tempy’s spyglass. Git it for me, will you? Maybe
you’d better hurry,” he added, with a suppressed chuckle. “She’ll be
here in a minute, herself.”
The spyglass was handed out in a jiffy.
[Illustration]