As the yacht rounded the east end of Crotch Island, Sanford made out quite plainly over the port bow the lighthouse tender steaming along from a point in the direction of Little Gull Light.
“There they come,” he said to Mrs. Leroy. “Everything is in our favor to-day, Kate. I was afraid they might be detained. We’ll steam about here for a while until the tender lands at the new wharf which we have just finished at the Ledge. The yacht draws a little too much water to risk the wharf, and we had better lie outside of the government boat. It’s as still as a mill-pond at the Ledge to-day, and we can all go ashore. If you will permit me, Kate, I’ll call to your sailing-master to slow down until the tender reaches the wharf.”
At this moment the major’s head appeared around the edge of the pilot-house door. He had overheard Sanford’s remark. “Allow me, madam,” he said in a voice of great dignity, and with a look at Sanford, as if somehow that gentleman had infringed upon his own especial privileges. The next instant the young engineer’s suggestion to “slow down” was sent bounding up to the sailing-master, who answered it with a touch of two fingers to his cap, an “Ay, ay, sir,” and some sharp, quick pulls on the engine-room gong.
Mrs. Leroy smiled at the major’s nautical knowledge and quarter-deck air, and rose to her feet to see the approaching tender. Under Sanford’s guiding finger, she followed the course of the long thread of black smoke lying on the still horizon, unwinding slowly from the spool of the tender’s funnel.
“Victory is ours!”
Everybody was now on deck. Helen and the other younger ladies of the party leaned over the yacht’s rail watching the rapidly nearing steamer; the older ladies mounted the deck from the cabin, some of them becoming fully persuaded that the Ledge with its derricks and shanty—a purple-gray mass under the morning glare—was unquestionably the expected boat.
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.
“Why, Henry,” she exclaimed, after everybody had said how wonderful it all was, “how much work you have really done since I saw it in the spring! And there is the engine, is it, to which the pump belonged that nearly drowned Captain Joe and Caleb? And are those the big derricks you had so much trouble over? They don’t look very big.”