Mrs. Leroy looked first in astonishment as she drew back her fingers. Then as she saw his evident sincerity, she made him an equally old-fashioned curtsy, and broke into a peal of laughter.

While this bit of comedy was being enacted, Jack, eager to show Helen some of Sanford’s choicest bits, led her to the mantelpiece, over which hung a sketch by Smearly,—the original of his Academy picture; pointed out the famous wedding-chest and some of the accoutrements over the door; and led her into the private office, now lighted by half a dozen candles, one illuminating the copper diving-helmet with its face-plate of flowers. Helen, who had never been in a bachelor’s apartment before, thought it another and an enchanted world. Everything suggested a surprise and a mystery.

But it was when she entered the dining-room on Sanford’s arm that she gave way completely. “I never saw anything so charming!” she exclaimed. “And H. S. all in a lovely wreath—why, these are your initials, Mr. Sanford,” looking up innocently into his eyes.

Sanford smiled quizzically, and a shade of cruel disappointment crossed Jack’s face. Mrs. Leroy broke into another happy, contagious laugh, and her eyes, often so impenetrable in their sadness, danced with merriment.

The major watched them all with ill-disguised delight, and, beginning to understand the varying expressions flitting over his niece’s face, said, with genuine emotion, emphasizing his outburst by kissing her rapturously on the cheek, “You dear little girl, you, don’t you know your own name? H. S. stands for Helen Shirley, not Henry Sanford.”

Helen gave a little start, avoiding Jack’s gaze, and blushed scarlet. She might have known, she said to herself, that Jack would do something lovely, just to surprise her. Why did she betray herself so easily?

When, a moment later, in removing her glove, she brushed Jack’s hand, lying on the table-cloth beside her own, the slightest possible pressure of her little finger against his own conveyed her thanks.

Everybody was brimful of happiness: Helen radiant with the inspiration of new surroundings so unlike those of the simple home she had left the day before; Jack riding in a chariot of soap-bubbles, with butterflies for leaders, and drinking in every word that fell from Helen’s lips; the major suave and unctuous, with an old-time gallantry that delighted his admirers, boasting now of his ancestry, now of his horses, now of his rare old wines at home; Sanford leading the distinguished Pocomokian into still more airy flights, or engaging him in assumed serious conversation whenever that obtuse gentleman insisted on dragging Jack down from his butterfly heights with Helen, to discuss with him some prosaic features of the club-house at Crab Island; while Mrs. Leroy, happier than she had been in weeks, watched Helen and Jack with undisguised pleasure, or laughed at the major’s good-natured egotism, his wonderful reminiscences and harmless pretensions, listening between pauses to the young engineer by her side, whose heart was to her an open book.

Coffee was served on the balcony, the guests seating themselves in the easy-chairs. Mrs. Leroy selected a low camp-stool, resting her back against the railing, where the warm tones of the lamp fell upon her dainty figure. She was at her best to-night. Her prematurely gray hair, piled in fluffy waves upon her head and held in place by a long jewel-tipped pin, gave an indescribable softness and charm to the rosy tints of her skin. Her blue-gray eyes, now deep violet, flashed and dimmed under the moving shutters of the lids, as the light of her varying emotions stirred their depths. About her every movement was that air of distinction, and repose, and a certain exquisite grace which never left her, and which never ceased to have its fascination for her friends. Added to this were a sprightliness and a vivacity which, although often used as a mask to hide a heavy heart, were to-night inspired by her sincere enjoyment of the pleasure she and the others had given to the young Maryland girl and her lover.

When Sam brought the coffee-tray she insisted on filling the cups herself, dropping in the sugar with a dainty movement of her fingers that was bewitching, laughing as merrily as if there had never been a sorrow in her life. At no time was she more fascinating to her admirers than when at a task like this. The very cup she handled was instantly invested with a certain preciousness, and became a thing to be touched as delicately and as lightly as the fingers that had prepared it.

The only one who for the time was outside the spell of her influence was Jack Hardy. He had taken a seat on the floor of the balcony, next the wall—and Helen.

“Jack, you lazy fellow,” said Mrs. Leroy, with mock indignation, as she rose to her feet, “get out of my way, or I’ll spill the coffee. Miss Shirley, why don’t you make him go inside? He’s awfully in the way here.”

One of Jack’s favorite positions, when Helen was near, was at her feet. He had learned this one the summer before at her house on Crab Island, when they would sit for hours on the beach.

“I’m not in anybody’s way, my dear Mrs. Leroy. My feet are tied in a Chinese knot under me, and my back has grown fast to the rain-spout. Major, will you please say something nice to Mrs. Leroy and coax her inside?”

Sam had rolled a small table, holding a flagon of cognac and some crushed ice, beside the major, who sat half buried in the cushions of one of Sanford’s divans. The Pocomokian struggled to his feet.

“You mustn’t move, major,” Mrs. Leroy called. “I’m not coming in. I’m going to stay out here in this lovely moonlight, if one of these very polite young gentlemen will bring me an armchair.” With a look of pretended dignity at Jack and Sanford.

“Take my seat,” said Jack, with a laugh, springing to his feet, suddenly realizing Mrs. Leroy’s delicate but pointed rebuke. “Come, Miss Helen,” a better and more retired corner having at this moment suggested itself to him, “we won’t stay where we are abused. Let us join the major.” And with an arm to Miss Shirley and a sweeping bow to Mrs. Leroy, Jack walked straight to the divan nearest the curtains.

When Helen and Jack were out of hearing, Mrs. Leroy looked toward the major, and, reassured of his entire absorption in his own personal comfort, turned to Sanford, and said in low, earnest tones, in which there was not a trace of the gayety of a moment before, “Can the new sloop lay the stones, Henry? You haven’t told me a word yet of what you have been doing for the last few days at the Ledge.”

“I think so, Kate,” replied Sanford in an equally serious voice. “We laid one yesterday before the easterly gale caught us. You got my telegram, didn’t you?”

“Of course! but I was anxious for all that. Ever since I had that talk with General Barton I’ve felt nervous over the laying of those stones. He frightened me when he said no one of the Board at Washington believed you could do it. It would be so awful if your plan should fail.”

“But it’s not going to fail, Kate. I can do it, and will.” There was a decided tone in his voice, and his eyebrows were knitted in the way she loved: she read his determination in every word and look. “All I wanted was a proper boat, and I’ve got that. I watched her day before yesterday. I was a little nervous until I saw her lower the first stone. Her captain is a plucky fellow,—Captain Joe likes him immensely. I wish you could have been there to see how cool he was,—not a bit flustered when he saw the rocks under the bow of his sloop.”

Kate handed him her empty coffee-cup, and going to the edge of the balcony rested her elbows on the railing, a favorite gesture of hers, and looked down on the treetops of the square.

“Caleb West, of course, went down with the first stone, didn’t he?” she asked when he joined her again. She knew Caleb’s name as she did those of all the men in Sanford’s employ. There was no detail of the work he had not explained to her.

“And was the sea-bottom as you expected to find it?” she added.

“Even better,” he answered, eager to discuss his plans with her. “Caleb reports that as soon as he gets the first row of enrockment stones set, the others will lie up like bricks. And it’s all coming out exactly as we have planned it, too, Kate.”

He went over with her again, as he had done so many times before, all of his plans for carrying on the work and the difficulties that had threatened him. He talked of his hopes and fears, of his confidence in his men, his admiration for them, and his love for the work itself. To Sanford, as to many men, there were times when the sympathy and understanding of a woman, the generous faith and ready belief of one who listens only to encourage, became a necessity. To have talked to a man as he did to Kate would not only have bored his listener, but might have aroused a suspicion of his own professional ability.

“I wonder what General Barton will think when he finds your plan succeeds? He says everywhere that you cannot do it,” Kate continued, with a certain pride in her voice, after listening to some further details of Sanford’s plans for placing the enrockment blocks.

“I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s hard to get these old-time engineers to believe in anything new, and this foundation is new. But all the same, I’d rather pin my faith to Captain Joe than to any one of them. What we are doing at the Ledge, Kate, requires mental pluck and brute grit,—nothing else. Scientific engineering won’t help us a bit.”

Sanford now stood erect, with face aglow and kindling eyes, his back to the balcony rail. Every inflection of his voice showed a keen interest in the subject.

“And yet, after all, Kate, I realize that my work is mere child’s play. Just see what other men have had to face. At Minot’s Ledge, you know,—the light off Boston,—they had to chisel down a submerged rock into steps, to get a footing for the tower. But three or four men could work at a time, and then at dead low water. They got only one hundred and thirty hours’ work the first year. The whole Atlantic rolled in on top of them, and there was no shelter from the wind. Until they got the bottom courses of their tower bolted to the steps they had cut in the rock, they had no footing at all, and had to do their work from a small boat. Our artificial island helps us immensely; we have something to stand on. And it was even worse at Tillamook Rock, on the Pacific coast. There the men were landed on a precipitous crag sticking up out of the sea, from breeches buoys slung to the masthead of a vessel. For weeks at a time the sea was so rough that no one could reach them. They were given up for dead once. All that time they were lying in canvas tents lashed down to the sides of the crag to keep them from being blown into rags. All they had to eat and drink for days was raw salt pork and the rain-water they caught from the tent covers. And yet those fellows stuck to it day and night until they had blasted off a place large enough to put a shanty on. Every bit of the material for that lighthouse, excepting in the stillest weather, was landed from the vessel that brought it, by a line rigged from the masthead to the top of the crag; and all this time, Kate, she was thrashing around under steam, keeping as close to the edge as she dared. Oh, I tell you, there is something stunning to me in such a battle with the elements!”

Kate’s cheeks burned as Sanford talked on. She was no longer the dainty woman over the coffee-cups, nor the woman of the world she had been a few moments before, eager for the pleasure of assembled guests.

Her eyes flashed with the intensity of her feelings. “When you tell me such things, Henry, I am all on fire,” she cried. Then she stopped as suddenly as if some unseen hand had been laid upon her, chilling and shriveling the hot burning words. “The world is full of such great things to be done,” she sighed, “and I lead such a mean little life.”

Sanford looked at her in undisguised admiration. Then, as he watched her, his heart smote him. He had not intended to wound her by his enthusiasm over his own work, nor to awaken in her any sense of her own disappointments; he had only tried to allay her anxieties over his affairs. He knew by the force of her outburst that he had unconsciously stirred those deeper emotions, the strength of which really made her the help she was to him. But he never wanted them to cause her suffering.

These sudden transitions in her moods were not new to him. She was an April day in her temperament, and would often laugh the sunniest of laughs when the rain of her tears was falling. These were really moods he loved.

It was the present frame of mind, however, that he dreaded, and from which he always tried to save her. It did not often show itself. She was too much a woman of the world to wear her heart upon her sleeve, and too good and tactful a friend to burden even Sanford with sorrows he could not lighten. He knew what had inspired the outburst, for he had known her for years. He had witnessed the long years of silent suffering which she had borne so sweetly,—even cheerfully at times,—had seen with what restraint and self-control she had cauterized by silence and patient endurance every fresh wound, and had watched day by day the slow coming of the scars that drew all the tighter the outside covering of her heart.

As he looked at her out of the corner of his eye,—she leaning over the balcony at his side,—he could see that the tears had gathered under her lashes. It was best to say nothing when she felt like this. He recognized that to have made her the more dissatisfied, even by that sympathy which he longed to give, would have hurt in her that which he loved and honored most,—her silence, and her patient loyalty to the man whose name she bore. “She’s had a letter from Leroy,” he said to himself, “and he’s done some other disgraceful thing, I suppose;” but to Kate he said nothing.

Gradually he led the talk back to Keyport, this time telling her of his men and their peculiarities and humors; of Caleb and his young and pretty wife; and of Aunty Bell’s watchful care over his comfort whenever he spent the night at Captain Joe’s.

Nothing had disturbed the other guests. The clink of the major’s glass and the intermittent gurgle of the rapidly ebbing decanter as Sam supplied his wants could still be heard from the softly lighted room. On the foreordained divan, half hidden by a curtain, sat Jack and Helen, their shoulders touching, studying the contents of a portfolio,—some of the drawings upside down, their low talk broken now and then by a happy, irrelevant laugh.

By this time the moon had risen over the treetops, the tall buildings far across the quadrangle breaking the sky-line. Below could be seen the night life of the Park: miniature figures strolling about under the trees, flashing in brilliant light or swallowed up in dense shadow, as they passed through the glare of the many lamps scattered among the budding foliage; a child romping with a dog, or a belated woman wheeling a baby carriage home. The night was still, the air soft and balmy; only the hum of the busy street a block away could be heard where they stood.

Suddenly the figure of a boy darted across the white patch of pavement below them. Sanford leaned far over the railing, a strange, unreasoning dread in his heart.

“What is it, Henry?” asked Mrs. Leroy.

“Looks like a messenger,” Sanford answered.

Mrs. Leroy bent over the railing, and watched the boy spring up the low steps of the street door, ring the bell violently, and beat an impatient tattoo with his foot.

“Whom do you want?” Sanford called gently.

The boy looked up, and, seeing the two figures on the balcony, answered, “Mr. Henry Sanford. Got a death message.”

“A death message, did he say?” gasped Mrs. Leroy. Her voice was almost a whisper.

“Yes; don’t move.” He laid a hand on her arm and pointed toward the group inside. A quick, sharp contraction rose in his throat. “Sam,” he called in a lowered tone.

“Yaas ’r,—comin’ direc’ly.”

“Sam, there’s a boy at the outside door with a telegram. He says it’s a death message. Get it, and tell the boy to wait. Go quietly, now, and let no one know. You will find me here.”

Mrs. Leroy sank into a chair, her face in her hands. Sanford bent over her, his voice still calm.

“Don’t give way, Kate; we shall know in a moment.”

She grasped his hand and held on. “Oh, who do you suppose it is, Henry? Will Sam never come?”

While he was comforting her, urging her to be patient and not to let Helen hear, Sam reëntered the room,—his breath gone with the dash down and up three flights of stairs,—walked slowly toward the balcony, and handed Sanford a yellow envelope. Its contents were as follows:—

Sanford looked hurriedly at his watch, forgetting, in the shock, to hand Mrs. Leroy the telegram.

Mrs. Leroy caught his arm. “Tell me quick! Who is it?”

“Forgive me, dear Kate, but I was so knocked out. It is no one who belongs to you. It is the boiler of the Screamer that has burst. Three men are hurt,” reading the dispatch again mechanically. “I wonder who they are?” as if he expected to see their names added to its brief lines.

For a moment he leaned back against the balcony, absorbed in deep thought.

“Twenty-three minutes left,” he said to himself, consulting his watch again. “I must go at once; they will need me.”

She took the telegram from his hand. “Oh, Henry, I am so sorry,—and the boat, too, you counted upon. Oh, how much trouble you have had over this work! I wish you had never touched it!” she exclaimed, with the momentary weakness of the woman. “But look! read it again.” Her voice rose with a new hope in it. “Do you see? Captain Joe signs it,—he’s not hurt!”

Sanford patted her hand abstractedly, and said, “Dear Kate,” but without looking at her or replying further. He was calculating whether it would be possible for him to catch the midnight train and go to the relief of the men.

“Yes, I can just make it,” he said, half aloud, to himself. Then he turned to Sam, who stood trembling before him, looking first at Mrs. Leroy and then at his master, and said in an undertone, “Sam, send that boy for a cab, and get my bag ready. I will change these clothes on the train. Ask Mr. Hardy to step here; not a word, remember, about this telegram.”

Jack came out laughing, and was about to break into some raillery, when he saw Mrs. Leroy’s face.

Sanford touched his shoulder, and drew him one side out of sight of the inmates of the room. “Jack, there has been an explosion at the work, and some of the men are badly hurt. Say nothing to Helen until she gets home. I leave immediately for Keyport. Will you and the major please look after Mrs. Leroy?”

Sanford’s guests followed him to the door of the corridor: Helen radiant, her eyes still dancing; the major bland and courteous, his face without a ruffle; Jack and Mrs. Leroy apparently unmoved.

“Oh, I’m so sorry you must go!” exclaimed Helen, holding out her hands. “Mr. Hardy says you do nothing but live on the train. Thank you ever so much, dear Mr. Sanford; I’ve had such a lovely time.”

“My dear suh,” said the major, “this is positively cruel! This Hennessy”—he was holding his glass—“is like a nosegay; I hoped you would enjoy it with me. Let me go back and pour you out a drop before you go.”

“Why not wait until to-morrow?” said Jack in perfunctory tones, the sympathetic pressure of his hand in Sanford’s belying their sincerity. “This night traveling will kill you, old man.”

Sanford smiled as he returned the pressure, and, with his eyes resting on Helen’s joyous face, replied meaningly, “Thank you, Jack; it’s all right, I see. Not a word until she gets home.”

Helen’s evening had not been spoiled, at all events.

Once outside in the corridor,—Sam down one flight of steps with Sanford’s bag and coat,—Mrs. Leroy half closed the door, and laying her hand on Sanford’s shoulder said, with a force and an earnestness that carried the keenest comfort straight to his heart, “I’ve seen you in worse places than this, Henry; you always get through, and you will now. I shall not worry, and neither will you. I know it looks dark to you, but it will be brighter when you reach Keyport and get all the facts. I will come up myself on the early morning train, and see what can be done for the men.”

CHAPTER VII—BETTY’S FIRST PATIENT

The wounded men lay in an empty warehouse which in the whaling-days had been used for the storing of oil, and was now owned by an old whaler living back of the village.

Captain Joe had not waited for permission and a key when the accident occurred and the wounded men lay about him. He and Captain Brandt had broken the locks with a crowbar, improvised an operating-table for the doctors out of old barrels and planks, and dispatched messengers up and down the shore to pull mattresses from the nearest beds.

The room he had selected for the temporary hospital was on the ground floor of the building. It was lighted by four big windows, and protected by solid wooden shutters, now slightly ajar. Through these openings timid rays of sunlight, strangers here for years, stole down slanting ladders of floating dust to the grimy floor, where they lay trembling, with eyes alert, ready for instant retreat. From the overhead beams hung long strings of abandoned cobwebs encrusted with black soot, which the bolder breeze from the open door and windows swayed back and forth, the startled soot falling upon the white cots below. In one corner was a heap of rusty hoops and mouldy staves,—unburied skeletons of old whaling-days. But for the accumulation of years of dust and mould the room was well adapted to its present use.

Lacey’s cot was nearest the door. His head was bound with bandages; only one eye was free. He lay on his side, breathing heavily. The young rigger had been blown against the shrouds, and the iron foot-rest had laid open his cheek and forehead. The doctor said that if he recovered he would carry the scar the rest of his life. It was feared, too, that he had been injured internally.

Next to his cot were those of two of the sloop’s crew,—one man with ribs and ankle broken, the other with dislocated hip. Lonny Bowles, the quarryman, came next. He was sitting up in bed, his arm in a sling,—Captain Brandt was beside him; he had escaped with a gash in his arm.

Captain Joe was without coat or waistcoat. His sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, his big brawny arms black with dirt. He had been up all night; now bending over one of the crew, lifting him in his arms as if he had been a baby, to ease the pain of his position, now helping Aunty Bell with the beds.

Betty sat beside Lacey, fanning him. Her eyes were red and heavy, her pretty curls matted about her head. She and Aunty Bell had not had their clothes off. Their faces were smudged with the soot and grime that kept falling from the ceiling. Aunty Bell had taken charge of the improvised stove, heating the water, and Betty had assisted the doctors—there were two—with the bandages and lint.

“It ain’t as bad as I thought when I wired ye,” said Captain Joe to Sanford, stopping him as he edged a way through the group of men outside. “It’s turrible hard on th’ poor mate, jes’ been married. Never died till he reached th’ dock. There warn’t a square inch o’ flesh onto him, the doctor said, that warn’t scalded clean off. Poor feller,” and his voice broke, “he ain’t been married but three months; she’s a-comin’ down on the express. Telling her’s the wust thing we’ve got to do to-day. Cap’n Bob’s goin’ ter meet ’er. The other boys is tore up some,” he went on, “but we’ll have ’em crawlin’ ’round in a week or so. Lacey’s got th’ worst crack. Doctor sez he kin save his eye if he pulls through, but ye kin lay yer three fingers in th’ hole in his face. He won’t be as purty as he was,” with an effort at a smile, “but maybe that’ll do him good.”

Sanford crossed at once to Lacey’s bed, and laid his hand tenderly on that of the sufferer. The young fellow opened his well eye, and a smile played for an instant about his mouth, the white teeth gleaming. Then it faded with the pain. Betty bent over him still closer and adjusted the covering about his chest.

“Has he suffered much during the night, Betty?” asked Sanford.

“He didn’t know a thing at first, sir. He didn’t come to himself till the doctor got through. He’s been easier since daylight.” Then, with her head turned toward Sanford, and with a significant gesture, pointing to her own forehead and cheek, she noiselessly described the terrible wounds, burying her face in her hands as the awful memory rose before her. “Oh, Mr. Sanford, I never dreamed anybody could suffer so.”

“Where does he suffer most?” asked Sanford in a whisper.

Lacey opened his eye. “In my back, Mr. Sanford.”

Betty laid her fingers on his hand. “Don’t talk, Billy; doctor said ye weren’t to talk.”

The eye shut again wearily, and the brown, rough, scarred hand with the blue tattoo marks under the skin closed over the little fingers and held on.

Betty sat fanning him gently, looking down upon his bruised face. As each successive pain racked his helpless body she would hold her breath until it passed, tightening her fingers that he might steady himself the better: all her heart went out to him in his pain. Aunty Bell watched her for a moment; then going to her side, she drew her hand with a caressing stroke under the girl’s chin, a favorite love-touch of hers, and said:—

“Cap’n says we got to go home, child, both of us. You’re tuckered out, an’ I got some chores to do. We can’t do no more good here. You come ’long an’ get washed up ’fore Caleb comes. You don’t want to let him see ye bunged up like this, an’ all smudged and dirty with th’ soot a-droppin’ down. He’ll be here in half an hour. They’ve sent the tug to the Ledge for him an’ the men. Come, Betty, that’s a good child.”

“I ain’t a-goin’ a step, Aunty Bell. I ain’t sleepy a bit. There ain’t nobody to change these cloths but me. Caleb knows how to get along,” she answered, her eyes watching the quick, labored breathing of the injured man.

The mention of Caleb’s name brought her back to herself. Since the moment when she had left her cottage, the night before, and in all her varying moods since, she had not once thought of her husband. At the sound of the explosion she had run out of her house bareheaded, and had kept on down the road, overtaking Mrs. Bell and the neighbors. She had not stopped even to lock her door. She only knew that the men were hurt, and that she had seen Captain Joe and the others working on the sloop’s deck but an hour before. She still saw Lacey’s ghastly face as the lantern’s light fell upon it, and his limp body carried on the barrow plank and laid outside the warehouse door, and could still hear the crash of Captain Joe’s iron bar when he forced off the lock. She would not leave the sufferer, now that he had crawled back to life and needed her,—not, at least, until he was out of all danger. When Captain Joe passed a few minutes later with a cup of coffee for one of the sufferers, she was still by Lacey’s side, fanning gently. He seemed to be asleep.

“Now, little gal,” the captain called out, “you git along home. You done fust-rate, an’ the men won’t forgit ye for it. Caleb’ll be mighty proud when I tell ’im how you stood by las’ night when they all piled in on top o’ me. You run ’long now after Aunty Bell, an’ git some sleep. I’m goin’ ’board the sloop to see how badly she’s hurted.”

Betty only shook her head. Then she rested her face against Captain Joe’s strong arm and said, “No, please don’t, Captain Joe. I can’t go now.”

She was still there, the fan moving noiselessly, when Mrs. Leroy, her maid, and Major Slocomb entered the hospital. The major had escorted Mrs. Leroy from New York, greatly to Sanford’s surprise, and greatly to Mrs. Leroy’s visible annoyance. All her protests the night before had only confirmed him in his determination to meet her at the train in the morning.

“Did you suppose, my dear suh,” he said, in answer to Sanford’s astonished look, as he handed that dainty woman from the train on its arrival at Keyport, “that I would permit a lady to come off alone into a God-forsaken country like this, that raises nothin’ but rocks and scrub pines?”

Mrs. Leroy seemed stunned when she saw the four cots upon which the men lay. She advanced a step toward Lacey’s bed, and then, as she caught sight of the bandages and the ghastly face upon the blood-stained pillow, she stopped short and grasped Sanford’s arm, and said in a tremulous whisper, “Oh, Henry, is that his poor wife sitting by him?”

“No; that’s the wife of Caleb West, the master diver. That’s Lacey lying there. He looks to be worse hurt than he is, Kate,” anxious to make the case as light as possible.

Her eyes wandered over the room, up at the cobwebbed ceiling and down to the blackened floor.

“What an awfully dirty place! Are you going to keep them here?”

“Yes, until they can get to work again. The building is perfectly dry and healthy, with plenty of ventilation. We will have it cleaned up,—it needs that.”

Betty merely glanced at the group as she sat fanning the sleeping man. Their entrance had made but little impression upon her; she was too tired to move, and too much absorbed in her charge to offer the fine lady a chair.

Something in the girl’s face touched the visitor.

“Have you been here all the morning?” she asked, crossing to Betty’s side of the cot, and laying a hand on her shoulder. With the passing of the first shock the natural tenderness of her heart had overcome her. She wanted to help.

Betty raised her eyes, the rims red with her long vigil, and the whites all the whiter because of the fine black dust that had sifted down and discolored her pale cheeks.

“I’ve been here all night, ma’am,” she said sweetly and gently, drawn instinctively by Mrs. Leroy’s sympathetic face.

“How tired you must be! Can I do anything to help you? Let me fan him while you rest a little.”

Betty shook her head.

The major crossed over to the cot occupied by Lonny Bowles, the big Noank quarryman, whose arm was in a sling, and sat down on the edge of the bed. No one had yet thought of bringing in chairs, except for those nursing the wounded. As the Pocomokian looked into Bowles’s bronzed, ruddy face, at the wrinkles about his neck, as seamy as those of a young bull, the great broad hairy chest, and the arms and hands big and strong, he was filled with astonishment. Everything about the quarryman seemed to be the exact opposite of what he himself possessed. This almost racial distinction was made clearer when, in the kindness of his heart, he tried to comfort the unfortunate man.

“I’m ve’y sorry,” the major began, with an embarrassment entirely new to him, and which he could not account for in himself, “at finding you injured in this way, suh. Has the night been a ve’y painful one? You seem better off than the others. How did you feel at the time?”

Bowles looked him all over with a curious expression of countenance. He was trying to decide in his mind, from the major’s white tie, whether he was a minister, whose next remark would be a request to kneel down and pray with him, or whether he were a quack doctor who had come to do a little business on his own account. The evident sincerity and tenderness of the speaker disconcerted him for the moment. He hesitated for a while, and finally formulated a reply in his mind that would cover the case if his first surmise as to his being a minister were correct, and might at the same time result in his being let alone if the second proved to be the case.

“Wall, it was so damn sudden. Fust thing I knowed I wuz in the water with th’ wind knocked out’er me, an’ the next wuz when I come to an’ they bed me in here an’ the doctor a-fixin’ me up. I’m all right, ye see, only I’m drier’n a lime-kiln. Say, cap,”—he looked over toward the water-bucket, and called to one of the men standing near the door,—“fetch me a dipper.”

To call a landsman “cap” around Keyport is to dignify him with a title which he probably does not possess, but which you think would please him if he did.

“Let me get you a drink,” said the major, rising from the bed with a quick spring indicative of his hearty desire to serve him. He clipped the floating tin in the bucket and brought it to the thirsty man.

Bowles drained the contents to its last drop. “He ain’t no preach an’ he ain’t no sawbones,” he said to himself, as he returned the empty tin to Slocomb with a “Thank ye,—much obleeged.”

Somehow the reply satisfied the major far more than the most elaborately prepared speech of thanks which he remembered ever to have received.

Then the two men continued to talk freely with each other, the one act of kindness having broken down the barrier between them. The Pocomokian, completely forgetting himself, told of his home on the Chesapeake, of his acquaintance with Sanford, of his coming up to look after Mrs. Leroy. The major’s tone of voice was as natural and commonplace as if he had been conversing with himself alone. “Couldn’t leave a woman without protection, you know,” to which code of etiquette Bowles bobbed his head in reply; the genuine, unaffected sympathy of the rough man before him seemed to have knocked every fictitious prop from under his own personality.

The quarryman, in turn, talked about the Ledge, and what a rotten season it had been,—nothing but southeasters since work opened; last week the men only got three days’ work. It was terrible rough on the boss (the boss was Sanford), paying out wages to the men and getting so little back; but it wasn’t the men’s fault,—they were standing by day and night, catching the lulls when they came; they’d make it up before the season was over; he and Caleb West had been up all the night before getting ready for the big derricks that Captain Joe was going to set up as soon as they were ready; didn’t know what they were going to do now with that Screamer all tore up: a record of danger, unselfishness, loyalty, pluck, hard work, and a sense of duty that was a complete revelation to Slocomb, whose whole life had been one prolonged loaf, and whose ideas of the higher type of man had heretofore been somehow inseparably interwoven with a veranda, a splint-bottomed chair, a palm-leaf fan, and somebody within call to administer to his personal wants.

When Captain Joe returned from an inspection of the sloop’s injuries,—strange to say, they were very slight compared to the force of the explosion,—Mrs. Leroy was still talking to Sanford, suggesting comforts for the men, and planning for mosquito nettings to be placed over their cots. The maid, a severe-looking woman in black, who had never relaxed her grasp of the dressing-case, had taken a seat on an empty nail-keg which somebody had brought in, and which she had carefully dusted with her handkerchief before occupying. It was evident from her manner that there was absolutely nothing she could do for anybody.

Captain Joe looked at the party for a moment, noted Mrs. Leroy’s traveling costume of blue foulard and dainty bonnet, ran his eye over the maid, glanced at the major, in an alpaca coat, with white waistcoat and necktie and gray slouch hat, and said in his calm, forceful, yet gentle way to Mrs. Leroy, “It was very nice of ye to come an’ bring yer friend,” pointing to the maid, “an’ any o’ Mr. Sanford’s folks is allers welcome at any time; but we be a rough lot, an’ the men’s rough, and ye kin see for yerself we ain’t fixed up fur company. They’ll be all right in a week or so. Ef ye don’t mind now, ma’am, I’m goin’ to shet them shetters to keep the sun out o’ their eyes an’ git th’ men quiet,—some on ’em ain’t slep’ any too much. The tug’ll be here to take ye all over to Medford whenever ye’re ready; she’s been to th’ Ledge fur th’ men. Mr. Sanford said ye’d be goin’ over soon.” He glanced about the room as he spoke, until his eye rested on Sanford. “Ye’re goin’ ’long, didn’t I hear ye say, sir?” Then addressing Slocomb, whose title he tried to remember, “We’ve done th’ best we could, colonel. It ain’t like what ye’re accustomed to, mebbe,—kind’er ragged place,—but we got th’ men handy here where we kin take care on ’em, an’ still look after th’ work, an’ we ain’t got no time to lose this season; it’s been back’ard, blowin’ a gale half the time. There’s the tug whistle now, ma’am,” turning again to Mrs. Leroy.

Mrs. Leroy did not answer. She felt the justice of the captain’s evident want of confidence in her, and realized at once that all of her best impulses could not save her from being an intrusion at this time. None of her former experience had equipped her for a situation of such gravity as this. With a curious feeling of half contempt for herself, she thought, as she looked around upon the great strong men suffering there silently, how little she had known of what physical pain must be. She had once read to a young blind girl in a hospital, during a winter, and she had sent delicacies for years to a poor man with some affliction of the spine. She remembered that she had been quite satisfied with herself and her work at the time; and so had the pretty nurses in their caps, and the young doctors whom she met, the head surgeon even escorting her to her carriage. But what had she done to prepare herself for a situation like this? Here was the reality of suffering, and yet with all her sympathy she felt within herself a fierce repugnance to it. After all her aspirations, how weak she was, and how heartily she despised herself!

As she turned to leave the building, holding her skirts in her hand to avoid the dirt, the light of the open door was shut out, and eight or ten great strong fellows in rough jackets and boots, headed by Caleb West, just landed by a tug from the Ledge, walked hurriedly into the room, with an air as if they belonged there and knew they had work to do, and at once.

Caleb strode straight to Lacey’s bed. His cap was off, his hands were clasped behind his back. He felt his eyes filling, and a great lump rose in his throat as he stood looking down at him. He never could see suffering unmoved.

The young rigger opened his well eye, and the pale cheek flushed scarlet as he saw Caleb’s face bending over him.

“Where did it hit ye, sonny?” asked Caleb, bending closer, and slipping one hand into Betty’s as he spoke.

Betty pointed to her own cheek. Lacey, she said, was too weak to answer for himself.

“I’ve been afeard o’ that b’iler,” Caleb said, turning to one of the men, “ever sence I see it work.”

Betty shook her head warningly, holding a finger to her lips. Caleb and the men stopped talking.

“You been here all night, Betty?” whispered Caleb, putting his mouth close to her ear, and one big hand on her rounded shoulder.

Betty nodded her head.

“Ye ought’er be mighty proud o’ her, Caleb,” said Captain Joe, joining the group, and speaking in a lowered tone. “Ain’t many older women ’longshore would’er done any better. I tried ter git ’er to go home with Aunty Bell two hours ago, but she sez she won’t.”

Caleb’s face glowed and his heart gave a quick bound as he listened to Captain Joe’s praise of the girl wife that was all his own. His rough hand pressed Betty’s shoulder the closer. He had always known that the first great sorrow or anxiety that came into her life would develop all her nature and make a woman of her. Now the men about him would see the strong womanly qualities which had attracted him.

“Lemme take hold now, Betty,” said Caleb, still whispering, and stooping over her again. “Ye’re nigh beat out, little woman.”

He slipped his arm around her slender waist as if to lift her from the chair. Betty caught his fingers and loosened his hand from its hold.

“I’m all right, Caleb. You go home. I’ll be ’long in a little while to get supper.”

Caleb looked at her curiously. Her tone of voice was new to him. She had never loosened his arm before, not when she was tired and sick. She had always crept into his lap, and put her pretty white arms around his neck, and tucked her head down on his big beard.

“What’s the matter, little one?” he asked anxiously. “Maybe it’s hungry ye be?”

“Yes, I guess I’m hungry, Caleb,” said Betty wearily.

“I’ll go out, Betty, an’ git ye some soup or somethin’. I’ll be back right away, little woman.” He tiptoed past the cot, putting on his cap as he went.

Two of the men followed him with their eyes and smiled. One looked significantly at Lacey and then toward the retreating figure, and shook his head in a knowing way.

Betty had not answered Caleb. She did not even turn her head to follow his movements. She saw only the bruised, pale face before her as she listened to the heavy breathing of the sufferer. She would have dropped from her chair with fatigue and exhaustion but for some new spirit within her which seemed to hold her up, and to keep the fan still in her hand.

When Sanford, after escorting Mrs. Leroy to her home, returned to the improvised hospital, he found the lanterns lighted, and learned that the doctor had dressed the men’s wounds, and had reported everybody on the mend, especially Lacey; at Betty’s urgent request he had made a careful examination of the young rigger’s wounds, and had pronounced him positively out of danger. Only then had she left her post and gone to her own cottage with Caleb.

Captain Joe had followed Aunty Bell home for a few hours’ rest, and all the watchers had been changed.

There was but one exception. Beside the cot upon which lay the sailor with the dislocated hip sat the major, with hat and coat off, his shirt-cuffs rolled up. He was feeding the sufferer from a bowl of soup which he held in his hand. He seemed to enjoy every phase of his new experience. It might have been that his sympathies were more than usually aroused, or it might have been that the spirit of vagabondage within him, which fitted him for every condition in life, making him equally at home among rich and poor, and equally agreeable to both, had speedily brought him into harmony with the men about him. Certainly no newly appointed young surgeon in a charity hospital could have been more entirely absorbed in the proper running of the establishment than was Slocomb in the care of these rough men. He had refused point-blank Mrs. Leroy’s pressing invitation to spend the night at her house, his refusal causing much astonishment to those who misunderstood his reasons.

“I’m going to take charge here to-night, major,” said Sanford, walking toward him, realizing for the first time that he had neglected his friend all day, and with a sudden anxiety as to where he should send him for the night. “Will you go to the hotel and get a room, or will you go to Captain Joe’s cottage? You can have my bed. Mrs. Bell will make you very comfortable for the night.”

The major turned to Sanford with an expression of profound sympathy in his face, hesitated for a moment, and said firmly, with a slight suggestion of wounded dignity in his manner, and in a voice which was sincerity itself, “By gravy, suh, you wouldn’t talk about going to bed if you’d been yere ’most all day, as I have, and seen what these po’ men suffer. My place is yere, suh, an’ yere I’m going to stay.”

Sanford had to look twice before he could trust his own eyes and ears. What was the matter with the Pocomokian?

“But, major,” he continued in protest, determining finally in his mind that some quixotic whim had taken possession of him, “there isn’t a place for you to lie down. You had better get a good night’s rest, and come back in the morning. There’s nothing you can do here. I’m going to sit up with the men myself to-night.”

The major did not even wait for Sanford’s reply. He placed the hot soup carefully on the floor, slipped one hand under the wounded man’s head that he might swallow more easily, and then raised another spoonful to the sufferer’s lips.

CHAPTER VIII—THE “HEAVE HO” OF LONNY BOWLES

The accident to the Screamer had delayed work at the Ledge but a few days. Other men had taken the place of those injured, and renewed efforts had been made by Sanford and Captain Joe to complete to low-water mark the huge concrete disk, forming a bedstone sixty feet in diameter and twelve feet thick, on which the superstructure was to rest. This had been accomplished after three weeks of work, and the men stood in readiness to begin the masonry of the superstructure itself so soon as the four great derricks required in lifting and setting the cut stone of the masonry could be erected. They were only waiting for Mr. Carleton’s acceptance of the concrete disk, the first section of the contract. The superintendent’s certificate of approval was important, one rule of the Department being that no new section of the work should begin until the preceding section was officially approved.

Carleton, however, declined to give it. His ostensible reason was that the engineer-in-chief was expected daily at Keyport, and should therefore pass upon the work himself. His real reason was a desire to settle a score with Captain Joe by impeding the progress of the work.

This animosity to Captain Joe had been aroused by an article very flattering to the superintendent, published in the “Medford Journal,” in which great credit had been given to Carleton for his “heroism and his prompt efficiency in providing a hospital for the wounded men.” The day after its publication, the “Noank Times,” a political rival, sent to make an investigation of its own, in the course of which the reporter encountered Captain Joe. The captain had not seen the Medford article until it was shown him by the reporter. He thereupon gave the exact facts in regard to the accident and the subsequent care of the wounded men, generously exonerating the government superintendent from all responsibility for the notice; adding with decided emphasis that “Mr. Carleton couldn’t ’a’ said no such thing ’bout havin’ provided the hospital himself, ’cause he was over to Medford to a circus the night the accident happened, and didn’t git home till daylight next mornin’, when everything was over an’ the men was in their beds.” The result of this interview was a double-leaded column in the next issue of the “Noank Times,” which not only ridiculed its rival for the manufactured news, but read a lesson on veracity to Carleton himself.

The denial made by the “Times” was the thrust that had rankled deepest; for Carleton, unfortunately for himself, had inclosed the eulogistic article from the “Medford Journal” in his official report of the accident to the Department, and had become the proud possessor of a letter from the engineer-in-chief commending his “promptness and efficiency.”

So far the captain had kept his temper, ignoring both the obstacles Carleton had thrown in his way and the ill-natured speeches the superintendent was constantly making. No open rupture had taken place. Those, however, who knew the captain’s explosive temperament confidently expected that he would break out upon the superintendent, in answer to some brutal thrust, in a dialect so impregnated with fulminates that the effect on Carleton would be disastrous. But they were never gratified. “’T ain’t no use answerin’ back,” was all he said. “He don’t know no better, poor critter.”

Indeed, it was only when a great personal danger threatened his men that the captain’s every-day, conventional English seemed inadequate. On such occasions, when the slightest error on the part of his working force might result in the instant death or the maiming of one of them, certain and it is to be hoped unrecorded outbursts of profanity, soaring into crescendos and ending in fortissimos, would often escape from the captain’s lips with a vim and rush that would have raised the hair of his Puritan ancestors,—rockets of oaths, that kindled with splutters of dissatisfaction, flamed into showers of abuse, and burst into blasphemies which cleared the atmosphere like a thunderclap. For these transgressions he never made any apology. In the roar of the sea they seemed sometimes the only ammunition he could depend upon. “Somebody’ll git hurted round here, if ye ain’t careful; somehow I can’t make ye understand no other way,” he would say. This was as near as he ever came to apologizing for his sinfulness. But he never wasted any of these explosives on such men as Carleton.

As the superintendent persisted in his refusal to give the certificate of acceptance, and as each day was precious, Sanford, whose confidence in the stability and correctness of the work which he and Captain Joe had done was unshaken, determined to begin the erection of the four derricks at once. He accordingly gave orders to clear away the mixing-boards and tools; thus burning his bridges behind him, should the inspection of the engineer-in-chief necessitate any additional work on the concrete disk.

These derricks, with their winches and chain guys, were now lying on the jagged rocks of the Ledge, where they had been landed the day before by Captain Brandt with the boom of the Screamer,—now stanch and sound as ever, a new engine and boiler on her deck. They were designed to lift and set the cut-stone masonry of the superstructure,—the top course at a height of fifty-eight feet above the water-line. These stones weighed from six to thirteen tons each.

During the delay that followed the accident the weather had been unusually fine. Day after day the sun had risen on a sea of silver reflecting the blue of a cloudless sky, with wavy tidelines engraved on its polished surface. At dawn Crotch Island had been an emerald, and at sunset an amethyst.

With the beginning of the dog-days, however, the weather had changed. Dull leaden fogbanks dimming the distant horizon had blended into a pearly-white sky. Restless, wandering winds sulked in dead calms, or broke in fitful, peevish blasts. Opal-tinted clouds showed at sunrise, and prismatic rings of light surrounded the moon,—all sure signs of a coming storm.

Captain Joe watched the changing sky where hour by hour were placarded the bulletins of the impending outbreak, and redoubled his efforts on the lines of the watch-tackles at which the men were tugging, pulling the derricks to their places.

By ten o’clock on the 15th of August, three of the four derricks, their tops connected by heavy wire rope, had been stepped in their sockets and raised erect, and their seaward guys had been made fast, Caleb securing the ends himself. By noon, the last derrick—the fourth leg of the chair, as it were—was also nearly perpendicular, the men tugging ten deep on the line of the watch-tackles. This derrick, being the last of the whole system and the most difficult to handle, was under the immediate charge of Captain Joe. On account of its position, which necessitated the bearing of its own strain and that of the other three derricks as well, its outboard seaward guy was as heavy as that of a ship’s anchor-chain. The final drawing taut of this chain, some sixty feet in length, stretching, as did the smaller ones, from the top of the derrick-mast down to the enrockment block, and the fastening of its sea end in the block, would not only complete the system of the four erected derricks, but would make them permanent and strong enough to resist either sea action or any weight that they might be required to lift. The failure to secure this chain guy into the anchoring enrockment block, or any sudden break in the other guys, would result not only in instantly toppling over the fourth derrick itself, but in dragging the three erect derricks with it. This might mean, too, the crushing to death of some of the men; for the slimy, ooze-covered rocks and concrete disk on which they had to stand and work made hurried escape impossible.

To insure an easier connection between this last chain and the enrockment block, Caleb had fastened below water, into the Lewis hole of the block, a long iron hook. Captain Joe’s problem, which he was now about to solve, was to catch this hook into a steel ring which was attached to the end of the chain guy. The drawing together of this hook and ring was to be done by means of a watch-tackle, which tightened the chain guy inch by inch, the gang of men standing in line while Captain Joe, ring in hand, waited to slip it into the hook. A stage manager stretching a tight-rope supported on saw-horses, with a similar tackle, solves, on a smaller scale, just such a problem every night.

Carleton, who never ran any personal risks, sat on the platform, out of harm’s way, sneering at the men’s struggles, and protesting that it was impossible to put up the four derricks at once. Sanford was across the disk, some fifty feet from Captain Joe, studying the effect of the increased strain on the outboard guys of the three derricks already placed.

The steady rhythmic movement of the men, ankle-deep in the water, swaying in unison, close-stepped, tugging at the tackle-line, like a file of soldiers, keeping time to Lonny Bowles’s “Heave ho,” had brought the hook and ring within six feet of each other, when the foot of one of the men slipped on the slimy ooze and tripped up the man next him. In an instant the whole gang were floundering among the rocks and in the water, the big fourth derrick swaying uneasily, like a tree that was doomed.

“Every man o’ ye as ye were!” shouted Captain Joe, without even a look at the superintendent, who had laughed outright at their fall. While he was shouting he had twisted a safety-line around a projecting rock to hold the strain until the men could regain their feet. The great derrick tottered for a moment, steadied itself like a drunken man, and remained still. The other three quivered, their top connecting guys sagging loose.

“Now make fast, an’ two ’r three of ye come here!” cried the captain again. In the easing of the strain caused by the slipping of the men, the six feet of space between hook and ring had gone back to ten.

Two men scrambled like huge crabs over the slippery rocks, and relieved Captain Joe of the end of the safety-line. The others stood firm and held taut the tug-lines of the watch-tackle. The slow, rhythmic movement of the gang to the steady “Heave ho” began again. The slack of the tackle was taken up, and the ten feet between the hook and the ring were reduced to five. Half an hour more, and the four great derricks would be anchored safe against any contingency.

The strain on the whole system became once more intense. The seaward guy of the opposite derrick—the one across the concrete disk—shook ominously under the enormous tension. Loud creaks could be heard as the links of the chain untwisted and the derricks turned on their rusty pintles.

Then a sound like a pistol-shot rang out clear and sharp.

Captain Joe heard Sanford’s warning cry, but before the men could ease the strain one of the seaward guys that fastened the top of its derrick to its enrockment-block anchorage snapped with a springing jerk, writhed like a snake in the air, and fell in a swirl across the disk of concrete, barely missing the men.

The gang at the tug-line turned their heads, and the bravest of them grew pale. The opposite derrick, fifty feet away, was held upright by but a single safety-rope. If this should break, the whole system of four derricks, with its tons of chain guys and wire rope, would be down upon their heads.

Carleton ran to the end of the platform, ready to leap. Sanford ordered him back. Two of the men, in the uncertainty of the moment, slackened their hold. A third, a newcomer, turned to run towards the concrete, as the safer place, when Caleb’s viselike hand grasped his shoulder and threw him back in line.

There was but one chance left,—to steady the imperiled derrick with a temporary guy strong enough to stand the strain.

“Stand by on that watch-tackle, every —— —— man o’ ye! Don’t one o’ ye move!” shouted Captain Joe in a voice that drowned all other sounds.

The men sprang into line and stood together in dogged determination.

“Take a man, Caleb, as quick’s God’ll let ye, an’ run a wire guy out on that derrick.” The order was given in a low voice that showed the gravity of the situation.

Caleb and Lonny Bowles stepped from the line, leaped over the slippery rocks, splashed across the concrete disk, now a shallow lake with the rising tide, and picked up another tackle as they plunged along to where Sanford stood, the water over his rubber boots. They dragged a new guy towards the imperiled derrick. Lonny Bowles, in his eagerness to catch the dangling end of the parted guy, began to scale the derrick-mast itself, climbing by the foot-rests, when Captain Joe’s crescendo voice overhauled him. He knew the danger better than Bowles.

“Come down out’er that, Lonny!” (Gentle oaths.) “Come down, I tell ye!” (Oaths crescendo.) “Don’t ye know no better’n to”—(Oaths fortissimo.) “Do ye want to pull that derrick clean over?” (Oaths fortissimisso.)

Bowles slid from the mast just as Sanford’s warning cry scattered the men below him. There came a sudden jerk; the opposite derrick trembled, staggered for a moment, and swooped through the air towards the men, dragging in its fall the two side derricks with all their chains and guys.

“Down between the rocks, heads under, every man o’ ye!” shouted the captain.

The captain sprang last, crouching up to his neck in the sea, his head below the jagged points of two rough stones, just as the huge fourth derrick, under which he had stood, lunged wildly, and with a ringing blow struck a stone within three feet of his head,—the great anchor-chain guy twisting like a cobra over the slimy rocks.

When all was still, Sanford’s anxious face rose cautiously from behind a protecting rock near where the first derrick had struck. There came a cheer of safety from Caleb and Bowles, answered by another from Captain Joe, and Sanford and the men crawled out of their holes, and clambered upon the rocks, the water dripping from their clothing.

Not a man had been hurt!

“What did I tell you?” called out Carleton sneeringly, more to hide his alarm than anything else.

“That’s too bad, Mr. Sanford, but we can’t help it,” said Captain Joe in his customary voice, paying no more attention to Carleton’s talk than if it had been the slop of the waves at his feet. “All hands, now, on these derricks. We got’er git ’em up, boys, if it takes all night.”

Again the men sprang to his orders, and again and again the crescendos of oaths culminated in fortissimos of profanity as the risks for the men increased.

For five consecutive hours they worked without a pause.

Slowly and surely the whole system, beginning with the two side derricks, whose guys still held their anchorage, was raised upright, Sanford still watching the opposite derrick, a new outward guy having replaced the broken one.

It was six o’clock when the four derricks were again fairly erect. The same gang was tugging at the watch-tackle, and the distance between the hook and the ring was once more reduced to five feet. The hook gained inch by inch towards its anchorage. Captain Joe’s eyes gleamed with suppressed satisfaction.

All this time the tide had been rising. Most of the rough, above-water rocks were submerged, and fully three feet of water washed over the concrete disk. Only the tops of the rough stones where Sanford stood, and the platform where Carleton sat, out of all danger from derricks or sea, were clear of the incoming wash.

Meanwhile the Screamer’s life-boat—the only means the men had that day of leaving the Ledge and boarding the sloop, moored in the lee of the Ledge—had broken from her moorings, and lay dangerously near the rocks. The wind too had changed to the east. With it came a long, rolling swell that broke on the eastern derrick,—the fourth one, the key-note of the system, the one Captain Joe and the men were tightening up.

Suddenly a window was opened somewhere in the heavens, and a blast of wet air heaped the sea into white caps, and sent it bowling along towards the Ledge and the Screamer lying in the eddy.

Captain Joe, as he stood with the hook in his hand, watched the sea’s carefully planned attack, and calculated how many minutes were left before it would smother the Ledge in a froth and end all work. He could see, too, the Screamer’s mast rocking ominously in the rising sea. If the wind and tide increased, she must soon shift her position to the eddy on the other side of the Ledge. But no shade of anxiety betrayed him.

The steady movement of the tugging men continued, Lonny’s “Heave ho” ringing out cheerily in perfect time. Four of the gang, for better foothold, stood on the concrete, their feet braced to the iron mould band, the water up to their pockets. The others clung with their feet to the slippery rocks.

The hook was now within two feet of the steel ring, Captain Joe standing on a rock at a lower level than the others, nearly waist-deep in the sea, getting ready for the final clinch.

Sanford from his rock had also been watching the sea. As he scanned the horizon, his quick eye caught to the eastward a huge roller pushed ahead of the increasing wind, piling higher as it swept on.

“Look out for that sea, Captain Joe! Hold fast, men,—hold fast!” he shouted, springing to a higher rock.

Hardly had his voice ceased, when a huge green curler threw itself headlong on the Ledge, wetting the men to their arm-pits. Captain Joe had raised his eyes for an instant, grasped the chain as a brace, and taken its full force on his broad back. When his head emerged, his cap was gone, his shirt clung to the muscles of his big chest, and the water streamed from his hair and mouth.

Shaking his head like a big water-dog, he waved his hand, with a laugh, to Sanford, volleyed out another rattling fire of orders, and then held on with the clutch of a devil-fish as the next green roller raced over him. It made no more impression upon him than if he had been an offshore buoy.

The fight now lay between the rising sea and the men tugging at the watch-tackle. After each wave ran by the men gained an inch on the tightening line. Every moment the wind blew harder, and every moment the sea rose higher. Bowles was twice washed from the rock on which he stood, and the newcomer, who was unused to the slime and ooze, had been thrown bodily into a water-hole. Sanford held to a rock a few feet above Captain Joe, watching his every movement. His anxiety for the safe erection of the system had been forgotten in his admiration for the superb pluck and masterful skill of the surf-drenched sea-titan below him.

Captain Joe now moved to the edge of the anchor enrockment block, standing waist-deep in the sea, one hand holding the hook, the other the ring. Six inches more and the closure would be complete.

In heavy strains like these the last six inches gain slowly.

“Give it to ’er, men—all hands now—give it to ’er! Pull, Caleb! Pull, you —— ——!” (Air full of Greek fire.) “Once more—all together —— ——!” (Sky-bombs bursting.) “All to—”

Again the sea buried him out of sight, quenching the explosives struggling to escape from his throat.

The wind and tide increased. The water swirled about the men, the spray flew over their heads, but the steady pull went on.

A voice from the platform now called out,—it was that of Nickles, the cook: “Life-boat’s a-poundin’ bad, sir! She can’t stan’ it much longer.”

Carleton’s voice shouting to Sanford from the platform came next: “I’m not going to stay here all night and get wet. I’m going to Keyport in the Screamer. Send some men to catch this life-boat.”

The captain raised his head and looked at Nickles; Carleton he never saw.

“Let ’r pound an’ be damned to ’er! Go on, Caleb, with that tackle. Pull, ye”—Another wave went over him, and another red-hot explosive lost its life.

With the breaking of the next roller the captain uttered no sound. The situation was too grave for explosives. Whenever his profanity stopped short the men grew nervous: they knew then that a crisis had arrived, one that even Captain Joe feared.

The captain bent over the chain, one arm clinging to the anchorage, his feet braced against a rock, the hook in his hand within an inch of the ring.

“Hold hard!” he shouted.

Caleb raised his hand in warning, and the rhythmic movement ceased. The men stood still. Every eye was fixed on the captain.

“LET GO!”

The big derrick quivered for an instant as the line slackened, stood still, and a slight shiver ran through the guys. The hook had slipped into the ring!

The system of four derricks, with all their guys and chains, stood as taut and firm as a suspension bridge!

Captain Joe turned his head calmly towards the platform, and said quietly, “There, Mr. Carleton, they’ll stand now till hell freezes over.”

As the cheering of the men subsided, the captain, squeezing the water from his hair and beard with a quick rasp of his fingers, sprang to Sanford’s rock, grasped his outstretched hand, shook it heartily, and called to Caleb, in a firm, cheery voice that had not a trace of fatigue in it after twelve hours of battling with sea and derricks, “All o’ you men what’s goin’ in the Screamer with Mr. Carleton to Keyport for Sunday ’d better look out for that life-boat. Come, Lonny Bowles, pick up them tackles an’ git to the shanty. It’ll be awful soapy round here ’fore mornin’.”