Francis Hopkinson Smith

“ He knew why he did not take her home, he said to himself; every one else knew why,—every one up and down Keyport knew what Betty had done to ruin him. If she was friendless, tramping the road, within sight of her own house, whose fault was it? Not his. He had never done anything but love her and take care of her.
He reached for a pair of tongs, stirred the coals, and threw on a single piece of driftwood. The fire blazed up brightly at once, its light flickering on the diver’s ruddy face, and as quickly died out. ”

“ So he merely answered he was glad Aunty Bell knew about Captain Joe, nodded good-night, and passed slowly down the board walk and up the road, his head on his chest, his big beard blowing about his neck in the rising wind. He kept saying to himself that Betty would telegraph or write and explain it all, or send some one to see him before bedtime.
It was dark when he reached home. He lit the kerosene lamp and pulled down the shades. He did not want passers-by to know he was alone. For an hour or more he strode up and down the kitchen, his thumbs in his suspenders, his supper untouched. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is only when this estate no longer satisfies, and one or both crave the human touch, that the danger-line is crossed. When stealthy fingers set the currents of both hearts free, and the touch becomes electric, discredited friendship escapes by the window, and triumphant love enters by the door.
The lantern shed its rays over Kate’s white draperies, warming them with a pink glow. The smoke of Sanford’s cigar curled upward in the still air and drifted out into the garden, or was lost in the vines of the jessamine trailing about the porch. ”

“ The talk with Smearly, in which Mrs. Leroy had cried out against the marriage relation, still lingered in Helen’s mind. Its last impression wore away only when Kate had taken her out on the lawn, on the second morning of her visit, to show her a secluded summer-house smothered in climbing vines and overlooking the water.
“This is for you and Jack,” she had said, with a merry twinkle in her eye and a depth of tenderness in her tone. “And for nobody else, dear. Not a soul will be able to find you.” ”

“ Caleb looked into her face and touched the dainty glove with two of his fingers,—he was afraid to do more, it was so small,—and, with his eyes on hers, listened while she spoke in a tender, sympathetic tone, lowering her voice so that no one could hear but himself,—not even Sanford: “I have heard all about your troubles, Mr. West, and I am so sorry for you both; she stayed with me one night last summer. She said, poor child, she was very miserable; it’s an awful thing to be alone in the world.” ”

“ Caleb slowly descended the yacht’s ladder, one iron-shod foot at a time, until the water reached his armpits. Then he swung himself clear, and the black, oily ooze closed over him.
Captain Joe leaned over the yacht’s rail, the life-line wound about his wrist, his sensitive hand alert for the slightest nibble of the man-fish. These nibbles are the unspoken words of the diver below to his “tender” above. His life often depends on these being instantly understood and answered. ”

“ The men were still asleep when Caleb reached the Ledge and threw open the door of the shanty,—all but Nickles, who was preparing breakfast. He looked at Caleb as if he had been an apparition, and followed him to the door of Captain Joe’s cabin, a little room by itself. He wanted to hear the dreadful news he brought. Unless some one was dead or dying no man would risk such a sea alone,—not even an old sailor like the diver. ”

“ The cogs of the drum of the hoisting-engine spun around until the great weight began to tell; then the strokes of the steam-pistons slowed down. The outboard mooring-lines were now tight as standing rigging. The butt of the boom in the sunken saddle was creaking as it turned, a pungent odor from the friction-heated oil filling the air. The strain increased, and the sloop careened toward the wharf until her bilge struck the water, drawing taut as bars of steel her outboard shrouds. Ominous clicks came from the new manilla as its twists were straightened out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was a gala-day for the young engineer. For months Captain Joe had been in search of a sloop of peculiar construction,—one of so light a draught that she could work in a rolling surf, and yet so stanch that she could sustain the strain of a derrick-boom rigged to her mast. Without such a sloop the building of the lighthouse Sanford was then constructing for the government on Shark Ledge, lying eight miles from Keyport, and breasting a tide running six miles an hour, could not go on. ”

“ The three men walked along the yacht’s deck to where the captain had been oiling the air-pump. It had been lifted clear of its wooden case and stood near the rail, its polished brasses glistening in the light of a ship’s lantern slung to the ratlines. Sprawled over a deck settee lay the rubber diving-dress,—body, arms, and legs in one piece, like a suit of seamless underwear,—and beside it the copper helmet, a trunkless head with a single staring eye. The air-hose and life-line, together with the back-plate and breast-plate of lead and the iron-shod shoes, lay on the deck. ”

“ The purple twilight had already settled over Medford harbor when the yacht with Captain Joe and Caleb on board glided beneath the wrecked trestle with its toppling cars, and made fast to one of the outlying spiles of the draw. As the yacht’s stern swung in toward the sunken caboose which coffined the bodies of the drowned men, a small boat put off from the shore and Sanford sprang aboard. ”

“ For the diver is more than amphibious; he is twice-bodied,—one man under water, one man above, with two heads and four hands. The connecting links between these two bodies—these Siamese twins—are the life-line and signal-cord through which they speak to each other, and the air-hose carrying their life-breath.
As Caleb dropped out of sight the crew crowded to the yacht’s rail, straining their eyes in the gloom. In the steady light of the lantern they could see the cord tighten and slacken as the diver felt his way among the wreckage, or sank to the bottom. ”

“ If Crotch Island was like the back of a motionless whale, Shark’s Ledge was like that of a turtle,—a turtle say one hundred and fifty feet long by a hundred wide, lying in a moving sea, and always fringed by a ruffling of surf curls, or swept by great waves that rolled in from Montauk. No landing could ever be made here except in the eddy formed by the turtle itself, and then only in the stillest weather. ”

“ When the smack came bowling into the harbor under double reefs, her wind-blown jib a cup, her sail a saucer, and rounded in as graceful as a skater on the outer edge, Sanford’s hand was the first that touched the captain’s as he sprang from the smack’s deck to the dock.
“Captain Joe,” he said. His voice broke as he spoke; all his love was in his eyes. “Don’t ever do that again. I saw it all from the lighthouse lantern. You have no right to risk your life this way.”
“’T ain’t nothin’, Mr. Sanford.” His great hand closed tight over that of the young engineer. ”

“ Soon the Ledge loomed up in all its proportions, with its huge rim of circular masonry lying on the water line like a low monitor rigged with derricks for masts. When the rough shanty for the men, and the platforms filled with piles of cement barrels, and the hoisting-engine were distinctly outlined against the sky, everybody crowded forward to see the place of which they had heard so much.
Mrs. Leroy stood one side, that Sanford might explain without interruption the several objects as they came into view. ”

“ Caleb clung with both hands to the lowering chain, waited until the water cleared, knocked out the Lewis pin that held the S-hook, thus freeing the chain, and signaled “All clear—hoist.” Then he hauled the crowbar towards him by the cord, signaled for the next stone, moved away from the reach of falling bodies, and sank into a bed of sea-kelp as comfortably as if it had been a sofa-cushion.
These breathing spells rest the lungs of a diver and lighten his work. Being at rest he can manage his dress the better, inflating it so that he is able to get his air with greater ease and regularity. ”

“ The small, close lantern became as silent as a death-chamber. The keeper, his back against the lens rail, folded his arms across his chest and stared out to sea. His face bore the look of one watching a dying man. Sanford did not move. His thoughts were on Aunty Bell. What should he say to her? Was there not something he could have done? Should he not, after all, have hailed the first tug in the harbor and gone in search of them before it was too late? ”

“ 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. ”

“ A restful lassitude, the reaction from the constant hourly strain of his work, came over Sanford; the world of perplexity seemed shut away, and he was happier than he had been in weeks. Suddenly and without preliminary question, Mrs. Leroy asked sharply, with a strange, quivering break in her voice, “What about that poor girl Betty? Has she patched it up yet with Caleb? She told me, the night she stayed with me, that she loved him dearly. Poor girl! she has nothing but misery ahead of her if she doesn’t.” ”

“ The relief is sometimes so soothing that in long waits the droning of the air-valve will lull the diver into a sleep, from which he is suddenly awakened by a quick jerk on his wrist. Many divers, while waiting for the movements of those above, play with the fish, watch the crabs, or rake over the gravel in search of the thousand and one things that are lost overboard and that everybody hopes to find on the bottom of the sea. ”

“ Bill Lacey, the handsome young rigger to whom the remark was addressed, leaned over the sloop’s rail, scanned every bolt in her plates, glanced up at the standing rigging, tried it with his hand as if it were a tight-rope, and with a satisfied air answered, “Them plates is all right, Marrows,—it’s her b’iler that’s a-worryin’ me. What do you say, Caleb?” turning to Caleb West, a broad-shouldered, grizzled man in a sou’wester, who was mending a leak in a diving-dress, the odor of the burning cement in a pan beside him mingling with the savory smell of frying pork coming up from the galley. ”

“ Dying and dead men were no new sight to Captain Joe and Caleb. The captain had sat by too many wounded men knocked breathless by falling derricks, and seen their life-blood ooze away, and Caleb had dragged too many sailors from sunken cabins. This accident was not serious; only three killed and one wounded out of twenty. In the morning their home people would come and take them away,—in cloth-covered boxes, or in plain pine. ”

“ Where Jack had but one room to spare for a friend, and Sanford but two, The Pines had whole suites opening into corridors terminating in vistas of entrancing lounging-places, with marvelous fittings and draperies. Where Sam and Jefferson, in their respective establishments, performed unaided every household duty, from making a cocktail to making a bed, The Pines boasted two extra men, who assisted Buckles at the sideboard, to say nothing of countless maids, gardeners, hostlers, stable-boys, and lesser dependents. ”

“ Captain Joe turned quickly to Sanford. “Pull in that hose, Mr. Sanford,” hauling in the slack of the life-line himself. “He’s a-comin’ up; he’ll bring him with him.”
These varied movements on the yacht stirred the overhanging crowd into action. They hoped the diver was coming up; they hoped, too, he would bring the dead man. His appearing with his awful burden would be less terrible than not knowing what the man-fish was doing. The crew of the yacht crowded still closer to the rail; this fishing at night for the dead had a fascination they could not resist. ”

“ Leroy. Did you hear what she said?”
“Yes, but it was only Kate. That’s her way, Helen. She never means half she says.”
“Yes, but the way she said it, Jack. She doesn’t know what love means. Loving is not being angry all the time. Loving is helping,—helping everywhere and in everything. Whatever either needs the other gives. I can’t say it just as I want to, but you know what I mean. And that Mr. Smearly; he didn’t think I heard, but I did.”
“Dear heart,” said Jack, smoothing her cheek with his hand, “don’t believe everything you hear. You are not accustomed to the ways of these people. ”

“ Nothing but rainbows for her and Jack.”
“Rainbows come after the storm, my dear lady, not before,” rejoined Smearly. “If they have any prismatics in theirs, they will appear in a year or two from now.” He had lowered his voice so that Helen should not hear.
“You never believe in anything. You hate women,” said Mrs. Leroy impatiently in an undertone.
“True, but with some exceptions; you, for instance,” with a mock bow. “But why fool ourselves, my dear lady? The first year is one of sugar-plums, flowers, and canary-birds. We can’t keep our hands off them; we love them so we want to eat them up.” ”

“ 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. ”