The Under Dog Part 9

He is precisely the same kind of man to-day, plus twenty years of experience. The figure is still the figure of his youth, the hickory a little better seasoned, perhaps, and the steel and whalebone a little harder, but they have lost none of their spring and vitality. The ratio of promotion has also been kept up. That he should now rank as the most expert pilot on the station was quite to be expected. He could have filled as well a commander's place on the bridge, had he chosen to work along those lines.

And the modesty of the man!

Nothing that he has done, or can still do, has ever stretched his hat measure or swelled any part of his thinking apparatus. The old pilot-cap is still number seven, and the sensible head beneath it number seven, too. It could be number eight, or nine, or even ten, if it had expanded in proportion to the heroic quality of many of his deeds. During the light-house days, for instance, when some sudden, s.h.i.+ft of wind would churn the long rollers into bobbles and then into frenzied seas that smothered the Ledge in white suds, if a life-boat was to be launched in the boiling surf, the last man to jump aboard, after a mighty push with his long hindmost leg, was sure to be this same bundle of whalebone and hickory. And should this boat, a few minutes later, go whirling along in the "Race," bottom side up, with every worker safe astride her keel, princ.i.p.ally because of Captain Bob's coolness and skill in hauling them out of the water, again the last man to crawl beside the rescued crew would be this same long-legged, long armed skipper.

Or should a guy-rope snap with a sound like a pistol-shot, and a great stone swung to a boom and weighing tons should begin running amuck through piles of cement, machinery, and men, and some one of the working gang, seeing the danger, should, with the quickness and sureness of a mountain-goat, spring straight for the stone, clutching the end of the guy and bounding off again, twisting the bight round some improvised snubbing-post thus checking its mad career, you would not have had to ask his name twice.

"Cap'n Bob stopped it, sir," was sure to have been the proffered reply.

So, too, in his present occupation of pilot. It was only a few years ago that I stood on the deck of an incoming steamer, straining my eyes across a heaving sea, the horizon lost in the dull haze of countless froth-caps; we had slowed for a pilot, so the word came down the deck.

Suddenly, against the murky sky-line, with mainsail double-reefed and jib close-hauled, loomed a light craft plunging bows under at every lurch. Then a chip the size of your hand broke away from the frail vessel, and a big wave lying around for such prey, sprang upon it with wide-open mouth. The tiny bit dodged and slipped out of sight into a mighty ravine, then mounted high in air, upborne in the teeth of another great monster, and again was lost to view. Soon the chip became a bit of driftwood manned by two toy men working two toy oars like mad and bearing at one end a yellow dot.

Then the first officer walked down the deck to where I stood, followed by a huddle of seamen who began unrolling a rope ladder.

"You're right," I heard an officer answer a pa.s.senger. "It's no fit weather to take a pilot. Captain wouldn't have stopped for any other boat but No. 11. But those fellows out there don't know what weather is."

The bit of driftwood now developed into a yawl. The yellow dot broadened and lengthened to the semblance of a man standing erect and unb.u.t.toning his oil-skins as he looked straight at the steamer rolling port-holes under, the rope ladder flopping against her side. Then came a quick twist of the oars, a sudden lull as the yawl shot within a boat's length of the rope ladder, and with the spring of a cat the man in oil-skins landed with both feet on its lower rung, and the next instant he was over the steamer's rail and on her deck beside me.

I thought I knew that spring, even before I saw his face or got hold of his hand.

It was Captain Bob.

As I look at him now, sitting in my office-chair, the smoke of the cigar curling about his bronzed, weather-tanned face, my eye taking in his slim waist, slender thighs, and long, sinewy arms and hands that have served him so well all his life, I can hardly believe that twenty years have pa.s.sed over his head since we worked together on Shark Ledge. But for the marks chalked on his temples by the Old Man with the Hour-gla.s.s and the few tally-scores of hard work crossing the corners of his mouth and eyes, he has the same external appearance as in the old days. Even these indexes of advancing years are lost when he throws his head up and laughs one of his spontaneous, ringing laughs that fills my office full of suns.h.i.+ne, illumining it for hours after he has gone.

"This pilotin' 's pretty rough sometimes," Captain Bob continued between the puffs of smoke, "but it ain't nothin' to the old days. When I look back on it all, seems to me as if we was out o' our heads most o' the time. I didn't know it then, but 'twas true all the same. Think now o'

layin' the Screamer broadside on that stone pile at Shark Ledge, unloadin' them stone with nothin' but a couple o' spar buoys to keep 'er off. Wonder I didn't leave 'er bones there. Would if I hadn't knowed every stick o' timber in 'er and jest what she could stagger under."

"But she was a good sea-boat," I interpolated. "The Screamer was always the pride of the work."

"None better. You'd a-thought so if you'd been with us that night off Hatteras; we layin' to, hatches battened down. I never see it blow wuss.

It came out o' the nor'west 'bout dark, and 'fore mornin' I tell ye it was a-humpin' things. We started with a pretty decent set o' sails, new eyelets rove in and new clew lines, but, Lord love ye, we hadn't taken old Hatteras into consideration. Bill Nevins, my engineer, and a landsman who was to work the h'istin' engine, looked kind 'er peaked when what was left of the jib come rattlin' down on his fo'c's'le hatch, but I says to him, 'the Screamer's all right, Billy, so she don't strike nothin' and so long's we can keep the water out 'er. Can't sink 'er any more'n an empty five-gallon ker'sene can with the cork in. We'll lay 'round here till mornin' and then set a signal. Something'll come along pretty soon.' Sure 'nough, 'long come a coaler bound for Charleston.

She see us a-wallowin' in the trough and our mast thras.h.i.+n' for all it was worth.

"'What d'ye want?' the skipper says, when he got within hail.

"'Some sail-needles and a ball o' twine,' I hollered back; 'we got everything else.' You should just a-heard him cuss--" and one of Captain Bob's laughs rang through the room. "Them's two things I'd forgot--didn't think o' them in fact till the mainsheet give 'way.

"Well, he chucked 'em aboard with another cuss. I hadn't no money to pay no salvage. All we wanted was them needles and a little elbow-grease and gumption. So we started in, and 'fore night, she still a-thras.h.i.+n', I'd fixed up the sails, patched the eyelets with a pair o' boot-legs, and was off again."

"What were you doing off Hatteras, Captain Bob?" I asked. I was leading him on, professing ignorance of minor details, so that I could again enjoy the delight of hearing him tell it.

"Oh, that was another one o' them crazy jobs I used to take when I didn't know no better. Why, I guess you remember 'bout that wreckin' job off Hamilton, Bermuda?"

He was settled in his chair now, his legs crossed, his head down between his shoulders.

"You see, after I quit work on the 'ledge,' I was put to 't for a job, and there come along a feller by the name of Lamson--the agent of an insurance company, who wanted me to go to Bermuda and git up some forty-two pieces o' white I-talian marble that had been wrecked three years before off the harbor of Hamilton. They ran from three to twenty-one tons each, he said. So off I started with the Screamer. He didn't say, though, that the wreck lay on a coral reef eight miles from land, or I'd stayed to home in New Bedford.

"When I got to where the wreck lay you couldn't see a thing 'bove water.

So I got into an old divin' dress we had aboard--one we used on the Ledge--oiled up the pump and went down to look her over, and by Jimmy Criminy, not a sc.r.a.p o' that wreck was left 'cept the rusty iron work and that part o' the bottom plankin' of the vessel that lay under the stones! Everything else was eaten up with the worms! Funniest-lookin'

place you ever see. The water was just as clear as air, and I could see every one o' them stone plain as daylight--looked like so many big lumps o' white sugar scattered 'round--and they _were_ big! One of 'em weighed twenty-one tons, and none on 'em weighed less'n five. Of course I knew how big they were 'fore I started, and I'd fitted up the Screamer special to h'ist 'em, but I didn't know I'd have to handle 'em twice; once from where they laid on that coral reef in twenty-eight feet o'

water and then unload 'em on the Navy Yard dock, above Hamilton, and then pick 'em up agin, load 'em 'board the Screamer, and unload 'em once more 'board a Boston brig they'd sent down for 'em--one o' them high-waisted things 'bout sixteen feet from the water-line to the rail.

That was the wust part of it."

Captain Bob stopped, felt in his pocket for a match, found it empty, rose from his chair, picked one from a match-safe on my desk, lighted his cigar, and resumed his seat again. I have found it wisest to let him have his own way in times like these. If I interrupt the flow of his talk it may stop for the day, and I lose the best part of the enjoyment of having him with me.

"Pretty decent chaps, them Englishmen"--puff-puff--the volume of smoke was all right once more. "One Monday morning I ran out of the Navy Yard dock within sight of the wreck. I had been layin' up over Sunday to get out of the way of a norther, when I luffed a little too soon, and bang went my bowsprit and sc.r.a.ped off about three feet of red paint from the end of the dock. One of the watchmen was on the string-piece, and saw the whole thing. 'Come ash.o.r.e,' he says, 'and go and see the Admiral; you can't sc.r.a.pe no paint off this dock with _my_ permission.'

"Well, I waited four hours for his nibs. When he come to his office quarters he was 'bout up to my arms, red as a can-buoy, and white hair stickin' up straight as a shoe-brush on his head. He looked cross enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two.

"'Ran into the dock, did ye--ran into Her Majesty's dock, and ye had room enough to turn a fleet in! Do you think we paint these docks for the fun of havin' you lubbers sc.r.a.pe it off? You'll pay for paintin' it over, sir--that's what you'll do, or I'll libel your boat, and send a file of marines down and tie her up,' and away he went up the dock to his office again.

"'Gos.h.!.+' I said to myself. 'Guess I'm in a fix,' The boys stood around and heard every word, and I tell ye it warn't no joke. As to money, there warn't a ten-dollar bill in the crew. I'd spent every cent I could rake and sc.r.a.pe to fit the Screamer out, and the boys were workin' on shares, and n.o.body was to get any money until the last stone--that big twenty-one-ton feller--was 'board the brig. Then I could go to the agents in Hamilton and draw two-thirds of my contract. That twenty-one-ton chunk, I forgot to tell ye, I had picked up the day before, and it was then aboard the Screamer, and we was on our way down to Hamilton, where the brig lay, when her nose sc.r.a.ped off the Admiral's paint.

"It did look kind o' nasty for us, and no mistake. One day more, and we'd 'a' been through and had our money.

"'Go up and see him,' said the watchman. 'He gits cool sometimes as sudden as he gits hot.' So Bill Nevins, my engineer, who was workin' the h'ister, and I went up. The old feller was sittin' on the piazza in a big rattan chair.

"'Come aboard,' he hollered, soon's he see Bill and me a-standin' in the garden-path with our hats off, lookin' like two jailbirds about to be sentenced. Well, we got up on the porch, and he looked us all over, and said:

"'Have you got that money with you?' 'No,' I said, 'I haven't,' and I ups and tells him just how we was fixed, and how we had worked, and how short we was of grub and clothes and money, and then I said, 'an' now I come to tell ye that I hit the dock fair and square, and it was all my fault, and that I'll pay whatever you say is right when I put this stone 'board and get my pay.'

"He looked me all over--I tell you I was pretty ragged; nothin' but a s.h.i.+rt and pants on, and they was almighty tore up, especially where most everybody wants to be covered--and Bill was no better. We'd 'bout used up our clo'es so that sail-needles nor nothin' else wouldn't a-done us no good, and we had no time nor no spare cash to go ash.o.r.e and get others.

"While I was a-talkin', the old feller's eyes was a-borin' into mine--then he roared out, 'No, sir; you won't!--you won't pay one d--d s.h.i.+llin', sir. You'll go back to your work, and if there's anything you want in the way of grub or supplies send here for it and you shall have it. Good-day.' I tell ye he was a rum one."

"Was that the last time you saw him?" I asked.

"Not much. When we got 'longside the brig the next day, her Cap'n see that twenty-one-ton stone settin' up on the deck of the Screamer, lookin' like a big white church, and he got so scared he went ash.o.r.e and started a yarn that we couldn't lift that stone sixteen feet in the air, and over her rail and down into the hold, and that we'd smash his brig, and it got to the Admiral's ears, and down come two English engineers, in cork helmets and white jackets and gold b.u.t.tons, spic' an' span as if they'd stepped out of the chart-room of a yacht. One was a colonel and the other was a major. They were both just back from India, and natty-lookin' chaps as you ever saw. And clear stuff all the way through--you could tell that before they opened their mouths.

"I was on the deck of the Screamer, overhaulin' the fall, surrounded by most of the crew, gettin' ready to h'ist the stone, when I first saw 'em. They and the Cap'n were away up above me, leanin' over the rail, lookin' at the stone church that some o' the boys was puttin' the chains 'round. Bill Nevins was down in the fo'c's'le, firin' up, with the safety-valve set at 125 pounds. He had half a keg o' rosin and a can o'

kerosene to help out with in case we wanted a few pounds extry in the middle of the tea-party. Pretty soon I heard one of 'em holler:

"'Ahoy! Is the Captain aboard?'

"'He is,' I said, steppin' out. 'Who wants him?'

"'Colonel Throckmorton,' he says, 'and Major Severn.'

"'Come aboard, gentlemen,' I says.

"So down they come, the Colonel first, one foot at a time touchin' the ladder, the Major following. When he reached the deck and wheeled around to look at me you just ought to have seen his face.

"'Are you the Captain?' he says, and he looked me over 'bout as the admiral had done.

"'I be,' I said, 'Captain Robert Brandt, of Pigeon Cove, Cape Ann, master and owner of the sloop Screamer, at your service'--I kep' front side to him. 'What can I do for you?'

"'Well, Captain,' he began, 'perhaps it is none of our business, but the Captain of the brig here,' and he pointed up above him, 'has asked us to look over your tackle and see whether it is safe enough to lift this stone. He's afraid you'll drop it and smash his deck in. Since I've seen it, and what you propose to lift it with, I've told him there's no danger, for you'll never get it off the deck. We are both officers of the Engineering Corps, and it is our business to know about such things.'