Caleb West, Master Diver Part 9

"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 sh.o.r.e 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 acc.u.mulation 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 a.s.sisted 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 pa.s.sed, 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 ch.o.r.es 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d-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 pa.s.sing 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 embarra.s.sment 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.