Caleb West, Master Diver

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

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.