Caleb West, Master Diver Part 31

"What have you to say, Mr. Carleton? Did you give any orders to raise that level?" The general looked over his gla.s.ses at the superintendent.

Carleton had evidently prepared himself for this ordeal, and had carefully studied his line of answers. As long as he kept the written requirements under the contract he was safe.

"If I understand my instructions, sir, I am not here to give orders.

The plans show what is to be done." He spoke in a low, almost gentle voice, and with a certain deference of manner which no one had ever seen in him before, and which Sanford felt was even more to be dreaded than his customary bl.u.s.ter.

Captain Joe stepped closer to Sanford's side, and Caleb and Captain Bob Brandt, who stood on the outside of the circle of officers grouped around the tripod, leaned forward, listening intently. They, too, had noticed the change in Carleton's manner. The other men dropped their shovels and tools, and edged up, not obtrusively, but so as to overhear everything.

"Is this the reason you have withheld the certificate, of which the contractor complains?" asked the general, with a tone in his voice as of a judge interrogating a witness.

Carleton bowed his head meekly in a.s.sent. "I can't sign for work that 's done wrong, sir."

Captain Joe made a movement as if to speak, when Sanford, checking him with a look, began, "The superintendent is right so far as he goes, general, but there is another clause in the contract which he seems to forget. I'll quote it," drawing an important-looking doc.u.ment from his pocket and spreading it out on the top of a cement barrel: "'Any dispute arising between the United States engineer, or his superintendent, and the contractor, shall be decided by the former, and his decision shall be final.' If the level of this concrete base does not conform to the plans, there is no one to blame but the superintendent himself."

Sanford's flas.h.i.+ng eye and rising voice had attracted the attention of the ladies as well as that of their escorts. They ceased talking and played with the points of their parasols, tracing little diagrams in the cement dust, preserving a strict neutrality, like most people overhearing a quarrel in which they have no interest, but who are alert to lose no move in the contest. Sanford would have liked less publicity in the settlement of the matter, and so expressed himself in a quick glance toward the guests. This anxiety was instantly seen by the major, who, with a tact that Sanford had not given him credit for, led the ladies away out of hearing on pretense of showing them some of the heavy masonry.

The engineer-in-chief looked curiously at Carleton, and the awakened light of a new impression gleamed in his eye. Sanford's confident manner and Carleton's momentary agitation over Sanford's statement, upsetting for an instant his lamblike reserve, evidently indicated something hidden behind this dispute which until then had not come to the front.

"I'll take any blame that 's coming to me," said Carleton, his meekness merging into a dogged, half-imposed-on tone, "but I can't be responsible for other folks' mistakes. I set that level myself two months ago, and left the bench-marks for 'em to work up to. When I come out next time they'd altered them. I told 'em it wouldn't do, and they'd have to take up what concrete they'd set and lower the level again. They said they was behind and wanted to catch up, that it made no difference anyhow, and they wouldn't do it."

General Barton turned to Sanford and was about to speak, when a voice rang out clear and sharp, "That's a lie!"

Everybody looked about for the speaker. If a bomb had exploded above their heads, the astonishment could not have been greater.

Before any one could speak Captain Bob Brandt forced his way into the middle of the group. His face was flushed with anger, his lower lip was quivering. "I say it again. That's a lie, and you know it," he said calmly, pointing his finger at Carleton, whose cheek paled at this sudden onslaught. "This ain't my job, gentlemen," and he faced General Barton and the committee, "an' it don't make no difference to me whether it gits done 'r not. I'm hired here 'long with my sloop a-layin' there at the wharf, an' I git my pay. But I've been here all summer, an' I stood by when this 'ere galoot you call a superintendent sot this level; and when he says Cap'n Joe didn't do the work as he ordered it he lies like a thief, an' I don't care who hears it. Ask Cap'n Joe Bell and Caleb West, a-standin' right there 'longside o' ye: they'll gin it to ye straight; they're that kind."

Barton was an old man and accustomed to the respectful deference of a government office, but he was also a keen observer of human nature.

The expression on the skipper's face and on the faces of the others about him was too fearless to admit of a moment's doubt of their sincerity.

Carleton shrugged his shoulders as if it were to be expected that Sanford's men would stand by him. Then he said, with a half sneer at Captain Brandt, "Five dollars goes a long ways with you fellers." The cat had unconsciously uncovered its claws.

Brandt sprang forward with a wicked look in his eye, when the general raised his hand.

"Come, men, stop this right away." There was a tone in the chief engineer's voice which impelled obedience. "We are here to find out who is responsible for this error. I am surprised, Mr. Sanford,"

turning almost fiercely upon him, "that a man of your experience did not insist on a written order for this change of plan. While six inches over an area of this size does not materially injure the work, you are too old a contractor to alter a level to one which you admit now was wrong, and which at the time you knew was wrong, without some written order. It violates the contract."

Here Nickles, the cook, who had been craning his neck out of the shanty window so as not to lose a word of the talk, withdrew it so suddenly that one of the men standing by the door hurried into the shanty, thinking something unusual was the matter.

"I have never been able to get a written order from this superintendent for any detail of the work since he has been here,"

said Sanford in a positive tone, "and he has never raised his hand to help us. What the cause of his enmity is I do not know. We have all of us tried to treat him courteously and follow his orders whenever it was possible to do so. He insisted on this change after both my master diver, Caleb West here, Captain Joe Bell, and others of my best men had protested against it, and we had either to stop work and appeal to the Board, and so lose the summer's work and be liable to the government for non-completion on time, or obey him. I took the latter course, and you can see the result. It was my only way out of the difficulty."

At this instant there came a crash which sounded like breaking china, evidently in the shanty, and a cloud of white dust, the contents of a partly empty flour-barrel, sifted out through the open window. The general turned his head in inquiry, and, seeing nothing unusual, continued:-

"You should have stopped work, sir, and appealed. The government does not want its work done in a careless, unworkmanlike way, and will not pay for it." His voice had a tone in it that sent a pang of anxiety to Mrs. Leroy's heart.

Carleton smiled grimly. He was all right, he said to himself. n.o.body believed the Yankee skipper.

Before Sanford could gather his wits in reply the shanty door was flung wide open, and Nickles backed out, carrying in his arms a pine door, higher and wider than himself. He had lifted it from its hinges in the pantry, upsetting everything about it.

"I guess mebbe I ain't been a-watchin' this all summer fur nothin', gents," he said, planting the door squarely before the general. "You kin read it fur yerself,-it's 's plain 's print. If ye want what ye call an 'order,' here it is large as life."

It was the once clean pine door of the shanty, on which Sanford and the men had placed their signatures in blue pencil the day the level was fixed, and Carleton, defying Sanford, had said it should "go that way" or he would stop the work!

General Barton adjusted his eyegla.s.ses and began reading the inscription. A verbatim record of Carleton's instructions was before him. The other members of the Board crowded around, reading it in silence.

General Barton replaced his gold-rimmed eyegla.s.ses carefully in their case, and for a moment looked seaward in an abstracted sort of way.

The curiously inscribed door had evidently made a deep impression upon him.

"I had forgotten about that record, general," said Sanford, "but I am very glad it has been preserved. It was made at the time, so we could exactly carry out the superintendent's instructions. As to its truth, I should prefer you to ask the men who signed it. They are all here around you."

The general looked again at Captain Joe and Caleb. There was no questioning their integrity. Theirs were faces that disarmed suspicion at once.

"Are these your signatures?" he asked, pointing to the scrawls in blue lead pencil subscribed under Sanford's.

"They are, sir," said Captain Joe and Caleb almost simultaneously; Caleb answering with a certain tone of solemnity, as if he were still in government service and under oath, lifting his hat as he spoke. Men long in government employ have this sort of unconscious awe in the presence of their superiors.

"Make a copy of it," said the general curtly to the secretary of the Board. Then he turned on his heel, crossed the Screamer's deck, and entered the cabin of the tender, where he was followed by the other members of the committee.

Ten minutes later the steward of the tender called Carleton. The men looked after him as he picked his way over the platforms and across the deck of the sloop. His face was flushed, and a nervous twitching of the muscles of his mouth showed his agitation over the summons. The apparition of the pantry door, they thought, had taken the starch out of him.

Mrs. Leroy crossed to Sanford's side and whispered anxiously, "What do you think, Henry?"

"I don't know yet, Kate. Barton is a gruff, exact man, and a martinet, but he hasn't a dishonest hair on his head. Wait."

The departure of the engineers aboard the tender, followed almost immediately by that of the superintendent, left the opposition, so to speak, unrepresented. Those of the ladies who were on sufficiently intimate terms with Sanford to mention the fact at all, and who, despite the major's efforts to lead them out of range, had heard every word of the discussion, expressed the hope that the affair would come out all right. One, a Mrs. Corson, said in a half-querulous tone that she thought they ought to be ashamed of themselves to find any fault, after all the hard work he had done. Jack and Smearly consulted apart.

They were somewhat disturbed, but still believed that Sanford would win his case.

To the major, however, the incident had a far deeper and much more significant meaning.

"It's a part of their infernal system, Henry," he said in a sympathetic voice, now really concerned for his friend's welfare,-"a trick of the d.a.m.nable oligarchy, suh, that is crus.h.i.+ng out the life of the people. It is the first time since the wah that I have come as close as this to any of the representatives of this government, and it will be the last, suh."

Before Sanford could soothe the warlike spirit of his champion, the steward of the tender again appeared, and, touching his cap, said the committee wished to see Mr. Sanford.

The young engineer excused himself to those about him and followed the steward, Mrs. Leroy looking after him with a glance of anxiety as he crossed the deck of the Screamer,-an anxiety which Sanford tried to relieve by an encouraging wave of his hand.

As Sanford entered the saloon Carleton was just leaving it, hat in hand. He did not raise his eyes. His face was blue-white. Little flecks of saliva were sticking in the corners of his mouth, as if his breath were dry.

General Barton sat at the head of the saloon table. The other members of the Board were seated below him.

"Mr. Sanford," said the general, "we have investigated the differences between yourself and the superintendent with the following result: First, the committee has accepted the work as it stands, believing in the truthfulness of yourself and your men, confirmed by a record which it could not doubt. Second, the withheld certificate will be signed and checks forwarded to you as soon as the necessary papers can be prepared. Third, Superintendent Carleton has been relieved from duty at Shark Ledge Light."

CHAPTER XXII

AFTER THE BATTLE