Captain Joe leaned forward, lowered the lantern that Caleb might see the ladder, reeled in the life-line hand over hand, and dragged the diver and his burden to the foot of the ladder. Sanford seized a boat-hook, and, reaching down, held the foot close to the yacht’s side; then a sailor threw a noose of marline twine around the boot. The body was now safe from the treacherous tide.
Caleb raised himself slowly until his helmet was just above the level of the deck. Captain Joe removed the lead plates from his breast and back, and unscrewed his glass face-plate, letting out his big beard and letting in the cool night-air.
“Any more down there?” he cried, his mouth close to Caleb’s face as he spoke.
Caleb shook his head inside the copper helmet. “No; don’t think so. Guess ye thought I was a-goin’ to stay all night, didn’t ye? I had ter crawl through two cars ’fore I got him; when I found him he was under a tool-chest. One o’ them lower cars, I see, has got its end stove out.”
“Jes’ ’s I told ye, Mr. Sanford,” said Captain Joe in a positive tone; “t’other body went out with the tide.”
The yacht, with the rescued dead man laid on the deck and covered with a sheet, steamed across the narrow channel, reversed her screw, and touched the fender spiles of her wharf as gently as one would tap an egg. Sanford, who, now that the body was found, had gone ahead in the small boat in search of the section boss, was waiting on the wharf for the arrival of the yacht.
“There’s more trouble, Captain Joe,” he called. “There’s a man here that the scow saved from the wreck. Mr. Smearly thought he would pull through, but the doctor who’s with him says he can’t live an hour. His spine is injured. Major Slocomb and Mr. Smearly are now in Stonington in search of a surgeon. The section boss tells me his name is Williams, and that he works in the machine shops. Better look at him and see if you know him.”
Captain Joe and Caleb walked toward the scow. She was moored close to the grassy slope of the shore. On her deck stood half a dozen men,—one a diver sent by the manager of the road, and who had arrived with his dress and equipment too late to be of service.
The injured man lay in the centre. Beside him, seated on one of Mrs. Leroy’s piazza chairs, was the village doctor; his hand was on the patient’s pulse. One of Mrs. Leroy’s maids knelt at the wounded man’s feet, wringing out cloths that had been dipped in buckets of boiling water brought by the men servants. Mrs. Leroy and Helen and one or two guests sat a short distance away on the lawn. Over by the stables swinging lights could be seen glimmering here and there, as if men were hurrying. There were lights, too, on the dock and on the scow’s deck; one hung back of the sufferer’s head, where it could not shine on his eyes.