The Veiled Lady, and Other Men and Women Part 20

"Old Moon-face'll have to git up and git in a minute," said a derrick man to a shoveller,--born sailors, these,--"there'll be a red-hot time 'round here 'fore night."

"Well, there ain't no wind."

"Ain't no wind,--ain't there? See that bobble waltzin' in?"

I looked seaward, and my eyes rested on a ragged line of silver edging the horizon toward Montauk.

"Does look soapy, don't it?" answered the shoveller. "Wonder if Cap'n Joe sees it."

Cap'n Joe had seen it--fifteen minutes ahead of anybody else,--had been watching it to the exclusion of any other object. He knew the sea,--knew every move of the merciless, cunning beast; had watched it many a time, lying in wait for its chance to tear and strangle. More than once had he held on to the rigging when, with a lash of its tail, it had swept a deck clean, or had stuck to the pumps for days while it sucked through opening seams the life-blood of his helpless craft. The game here would be to lift its victim on the back of a smooth under-roller and with mighty effort hurl it like a battering ram against the sh.o.r.e rocks, shattering its timbers into drift wood.

"Billy," said Captain Joe to the shoveller, "go down to the edge of the stone pile and holler to the sloop to cast off and make for home.

Hurry, now! And, Jimmy,"--this to his pump tender,--"unhook this breastplate,--there won't be no divin', today. I've been mistrustin'

the wind would haul ever since I got up this mornin'."

The shoveller sprang from the platform and began clambering over the slippery, slimy rocks like a crab, his red s.h.i.+rt marked with the white "X" of his suspenders in relief against the blue water. When he reached the outermost edge of the stone pile, where the ten-ton blocks lay, he made a megaphone of his fingers and repeated the captain's orders to the Susie Ann.

Baxter listened with his hands cupped to his ears.

"Who says so?" came back the reply.

"Cap'n Joe."

"What fur?"

"Goin' to blow,--don't ye see it?"

Baxter stepped gingerly along the sloop's rail. Obeying the order meant twenty-four hour's delay in making sure of his wages,--perhaps a week, spring weather being uncertain. He didn't "see no blow." Besides, if there was one coming, it wasn't his sloop or his stone. When he reached the foot of the bowsprit Moon-face sent this answer over the water:

"Let her blow and be d--! This sloop's chartered to deliver this stone.

We've got steam up and the stuff's goin' over outside. Get your divers ready. I ain't shovin' no baby carriage and don't you forgit it. I'm comin' on! Cast off that buoy line, you,"--this to one of his men.

Captain Joe continued stripping off his leaden breastplate. He had heard his order repeated and knew that it had been given correctly,--Baxter's subsequent proceedings did not interest him. If he had anything to say in answer it was of no moment to him. His word was law on the Ledge; first, because the men daily trusted their lives to his guidance, and, second, because they all loved him with a love hard for a landsman to understand, especially today, when the boss and the gang never, by any possibility, pull together.

"Baxter says he's comin' on, sir," said Billy, when he reached the captain's side, the grin on his sunburnt face widening until its two ends hooked over his ears. Billy had heard nothing so funny for weeks.

"Comin' on?"

"That's what he hollered. Wants you to git ready to take his stuff, sir."

I was out of the shanty now. I came in two jumps. With that squall rus.h.i.+ng from the eastward and the tide making flood, any man who would leave the protection of the spar buoy for the purpose of unloading was fit for a lunatic asylum.

Captain Joe had straightened up and was screening his eyes with his hand when I reached his side, his gaze rivetted on the loosened sloop, which had now hauled in her tether line and was drifting clear of the buoy. The captain was still incredulous.

"No, he ain't comin'," he said to me. "He's all right,--he'll port his helm in a minute,--but he'd better send up his jib"--and he swept his eye around,--"and that quick, too."

At this instant the sloop wavered and lurched heavily. The outer edge of the insuck had caught her bow.

Men's minds work quickly in times of great danger,--minds like Captain Joe's. In a flash he had taken in the fast-approaching roller, froth-capped by the sudden squall; the surging vessel and the scared face of Baxter, who, having realized his mistake was now clutching wildly at the tiller and shouting orders to his men, none of which could be carried out. Captain Joe knew what would happen,--what had happened before, and what would happen again with fools like Baxter,--now,--in a minute,--before he could reach the edge of the stone pile, hampered as he was in a rubber suit that bound his arms and tied his great legs together. And he understood too the sea's game, and that the only way to outwit it would be to use the beast's own tactics.

When it gathered itself for the thrust and started in to hurl the doomed vessel the full length of its mighty arms, the sloop's only safety lay in widening the s.p.a.ce. A cus.h.i.+on of backwater would then receive the sloop's forefoot in place of the snarling teeth of low crunching rocks.

He had kicked off both shoes by this time and was shouting out directions to Baxter, who was slowly and surely being sucked into the swirl:--

"Up with your jib! No,--NO! Let that mainsail alone! UP! Do ye want to git her on the stone pile, you? Port your helm! PORT! O G.o.d!--Look at him!!"

Captain Joe had slid from the platform now and was flopping his great body over the slimy, slippery rocks like a seal, falling into water holes every other step, crawling out on his belly, rolling from one slanting stone to another, shouting to his men, every time he had the breath:--

"Man that yawl and run a line as quick as G.o.d'll let ye--out to the buoy! Do ye hear? Pull that fall off the drum of the h'ister and git the end of a line on it! She'll be on top of us in a minute and the mast out of her! QUICK!"

Jimmy sprang for a coil of rope; Billy and the others threw themselves after him; while half a dozen men working around the small eddy in the lee of the diminutive island caught up the oars and made a dash for the yawl.

All this time the sloop, under the uplift of the first big Montauk roller,--the skirmish line of the attack,--surged, bow on, to destruction. Baxter, although shaking with fear, had sense enough left to keep her nose pointed to the stone pile. The mast might come out of her, but that was better than being gashed amids.h.i.+ps and sunk in thirty feet of water.

Captain Joe, his rubber suit wet and glistening as a s.h.i.+ny porpoise, his hair matted to his head, had now reached the outermost rock opposite the doomed craft, and stood near enough to catch every expression that crossed Baxter's face, who, white as chalk, was holding the tiller with all his strength, cap off, his blousy hair flying in the increasing gale, his mouth tight shut. Go ash.o.r.e she must. It would be every man for himself then. No help would come,--no help COULD come.

Captain Joe and his men would run for shelter as soon as the blow fell, and leave them to their fate. Men like Baxter are built to think this way.

All these minutes--seconds, really,--Captain Joe stood bending forward, watching where the sloop would strike, his hands outstretched in the att.i.tude of a ball-player awaiting a ball. If her nose should hit the sharp, square edges of one of the ten-ton blocks, G.o.d help her! She would split wide open like a melon. If by any chance her forefoot should be thrust into one of the many gaps between the enrockment blocks,--s.p.a.ces from two to three feet wide,--and her bow timbers thus take the shock, there was a living chance to save her.

A cry from Baxter, who had dropped the tiller and was scrambling over the stone-covered deck to the bowsprit, reached the captain's ears, but he never altered his position. What he was to do must be done surely.

Baxter didn't count,--wasn't in the back of his head. There were plenty of willing hands to pick up Baxter and his men.

Then a thing happened which, if I had not seen it, I would never have believed possible. The water cus.h.i.+on of the outsuck helped,--so did the huge roller which, in its blind rage, had underestimated the distance between its lift and the wide-open jaws of the rock,--as a maddened bull often underestimates the length of its thrust, its horns falling short of the matador.

Whatever the cause, Captain Joe watched his chance, sprang to the outermost rock, and, bracing his great snubbing posts of legs against its edge, reversed his body, caught the wavering sloop on his broad shoulders, close under her bowsprit chains, and pushed back with all his might.

Then began a struggle between the strength of the man and the lunge of the sea. With every succeeding onslaught, and before the savage roller could fully lift the staggering craft to hurl her to destruction, Captain Joe, with the help of the outsuck, would shove her back from the waiting rocks. This was repeated again and again,--the men in the rescuing yawl meanwhile bending every muscle to carry out the captain's commands.

Sometimes his head was free enough to shout his orders, and sometimes both man and bow were smothered in suds.

"Keep that fall clear!" would come his order "Stand ready to catch the yawl! Shut that--" here a souse would stop his breath,--"shut that furnace door! Do ye want the steam out of the b'iler?"--etc., etc.

That the slightest misstep on the slimy rocks on which his feet were braced meant sending him under the sloop's bow where he would be caught between her forefoot and the rocks and ground into pulp concerned him as little as did the fact that Baxter and his men had crawled along the bowsprit over his head and had dropped to the island without wetting their shoes. That his diving suit was full of water and he soaking wet to the skin, made not the slightest difference to him--no more than it would to a Newfoundland dog saving a child. His thoughts were on other things,--on the rescuing yawl speeding toward the spar buoy, on the stout hands and knowing ones who were pulling for all they were worth to that anchor of safety;--on two of his own men who, seeing Baxter's cowardly desertion, had sprung like cats at the bowsprit of the sloop in one of her dives, and were then on the stern ready to pay out a line to the yawl when she reached the goal. No,--he'd hold on "till h.e.l.l froze over."

A hawser now ripped itself clear from out the crest of a roller. This meant that the two cats, despite the increasing gale and thrash of the onrus.h.i.+ng sea had succeeded in paying out a stern line to the men in the yawl, who had slipped it through the s.n.a.t.c.h block fastened in the buoy. It meant, too, that this line had been connected with the line they had brought with them from the island, its far end being around the drum of our hoister.

A shrill cry now came from one of the crew in the yawl alongside the spar buoy, followed instantly by the clear, ringing order, "GO AHEAD!"

Now a burst of feathery steam plumed skyward, and then the slow "chuggity-chug" of our drum cogs rose in the air. The stern line straightened until it was as rigid as a bar of iron, sagged for an instant under the slump of the staggering sloop, straightened again, and remained rigid. The sloop, held by the stern line, crept slowly back to safety.

Captain Joe looked over his shoulder, noted the widening distance, and leaped back to the insh.o.r.e rocks.

Late that afternoon, when the tug, with Captain Joe and me on board, reached the tug's moorings in New London harbor, the dock was crowded with anxious faces,--Abram Marrows and his wife among them. It had been an anxious day along the sh.o.r.e road. The squall, which had blown for half an hour and had then slunk away toward Little Gull, grumbling as it went, had sent everything that could seek shelter bowling into New London Harbor under close reefs. It had also started Marrows and his wife on a run to the dock, where they had stood for hours straining their eyes seaward, each incoming vessel, as she swooped past the dock into the inner basin, adding to their anxiety.

"Wouldn't give a keg o' sp'ilt fish for her. Ain't a livin' chance o'

savin' her," had bellowed the captain of a fis.h.i.+ng smack, as he swept by, within biscuit-toss of the dock, his boom submerged, the water curling over the rail.

"She went slap ag'in them chunks o' cut stone!" shouted the mate of a tug through the window of a pilot house.

"Got her off with her bow split open, but they can't keep her free!