Sanford, who had been standing by the tiller, anxiously watching the conflict with the sea, walked forward and grasped the skipper’s hand.
“I want to congratulate you,” he said, “on your sloop and on your pluck. It is not every man can lie around this stone-pile for the first time and keep his head.”
Captain Brandt flushed like a bashful girl, and turned away his face. “Well, sir—ye see”—He never finished the sentence. The compliment had upset him more than the escape of the sloop.
All was bustle now on board the Screamer. The boom was swung in aboard, lowered, and laid on the deck. Caleb had been hauled up to the surface, his helmet unscrewed, and his shoes and breast-plate taken off. He still wore his dress, so that he could be ready for the other two stones when the tide turned. Meanwhile he walked about the deck looking like a great bear on his hind legs, his bushy beard puffed out over his copper collar.
During the interval of the change of tide dinner was announced, and the Screamer’s crew went below to more sizzle and doughballs, and this time a piece of corned beef, while Sanford, Captain Joe, Caleb, and Lacey sprang into the sloop’s yawl and sculled for the shanty and their dinner, keeping close to the hawser still holding the sloop.
The unexpected made half the battle at the Ledge. It was not unusual to see a southeast roll, three days old, cut down in an hour to the smoothness of a mill-pond by a northwest gale, and before night to find this same dead calm followed by a semi-cyclone. Only an expert could checkmate the consequences of weather manoeuvres like these. Before Captain Joe, sitting at the head of the table, had filled each man’s plate with his fair proportion of cabbage and pork, a whiff of wind puffed in the bit of calico that served as a curtain for the shanty’s pantry window,—the one facing east. Captain Joe sprang from his seat, and, bareheaded as he was, mounted the concrete platforms and looked seaward. Off towards Block Island he saw a little wrinkling line of silver flashing out of the deepening haze, while toward Crotch Island scattered flurries of wind furred the glittering surface of the sea with dull splotches,—as when one breathes upon a mirror. The captain turned quickly, entered the shanty, and examined the barometer. It had fallen two points.
“Finish yer dinner, men,” he said quietly. “That’s the las’ stone to-day, Mr. Sanford. It’s beginnin’ ter git lumpy. It’ll blow a livin’ gale o’ wind by sundown.”
A second and stronger puff now swayed the men’s oilskins, hanging against the east door. This time the air was colder and more moist. The sky overhead had thickened. In the southeast lay two sun-dog clouds, their backs shimmering like opals, while about the feverish eye of the sun itself gathered a reddish circle like an inflammation.
Sanford was on the platform, reading the signs of the coming gale. It was important that he should reach Keyport by night, and he had no time to spare. As the men came out one after another, each of them glanced toward the horizon, and quickening his movements fell to work putting the place in order. The loose barrow planks were quickly racked up on the shanty’s roof, out of the wash of the expected surf; an extra safety-guy was made fast to the platform holding the hoisting-engine, and a great tarpaulin drawn over the cement and lashed fast. Meanwhile Captain Joe busied himself in examining the turnbuckles of the holding-down rods, which bound the shanty to the Ledge, and giving them another tightening twist, ordering the heavy wooden shutters for the east side of the shanty to be put up, and seeing that the stove-pipe that stuck through the roof was taken down and stored inside.