“How’s her boiler?” Sanford asked, with sudden earnestness.
“I ain’t looked her b’iler over yit, but her cylinders is big enough. If her steam gives out, I’ll put one of our own aboard. She’ll do, sir. Don’t worry a mite; we’ll spank that baby when we git to ’t,”—and his leathery, weather-tanned face cracked into smiles.
Sanford laughed again. The cheerful humor of this man, whose judgment of men never failed him, and whose knowledge of sea-things made him invaluable, was always a tonic to him.
“I’m glad you like her skipper,” he said, taking from a pigeonhole in his perfectly appointed desk, as he spoke, the charter-party of the sloop. “I see his name is Brandt, and the sloop’s name is the Screamer. Hope she’ll live up to her name. The charter-party, I think, ought to contain some allusion to the coast-chart, in case of any protest Brandt may make afterwards about the shoaliness of the water. Better have him put his initials on the chart,” he added, with the instinctive habit of caution which always distinguished his business methods. “Do you think the shallow water round the Ledge will scare him?” he continued, as he crossed the room to a row of shelves filled with mechanical drawings, in search of a round tin case holding the various charts of Long Island Sound.
Captain Joe did not answer Sanford’s question at once. His mind was on something else. He took off his hat and pea-jacket, hung them on a hook, moved back the pile of books from the middle of the table, with as little consideration as he would have shown to so many bricks, corked a bottle of liquid ink for safety, flattened with his big hands the chart which Sanford had unrolled, weighted its four corners with a T square and some color-pans, and then, bending his massive head, began studying its details with all the easy confidence of a first officer on a Cunarder.
As he leaned over the chart the sunlight played about his face and brought into stronger relief the few gray hairs which silvered the short brown curls crisped about his neck and temples. These hairs betrayed the only change seen in him since the memorable winter’s day when he had saved the lives of the passengers on the sinking ferry-boat near Hoboken by calking with his own body the gash left in her side by a colliding tug. But time had touched him nowhere else. He was still the same broad-as-he-was-long old sea-dog; tough, sturdy, tender-eyed, and fearless. His teeth were as white, his mouth was as firm, his jaw as strong and determined.
The captain placed his horn-tipped finger on a dot marked “Shark’s Ledge Spindle,” obliterating in the act some forty miles of sea-space; repeated to himself in a low voice, “Six fathoms—four—one and a half—hum, ’t ain’t nothin’; that Cape Ann sloop can do it;” and then suddenly remembering Sanford’s question, he answered, with quick lifting of his head and with a cheery laugh, “Skeer him? Wait till ye see him, sir. And he won’t make no pro-test, nuther. He ain’t that kind.”
When the coast-chart had been rolled up and replaced in the tin case, to be taken to Keyport for the skipper’s initials, both men resumed their seats by Sanford’s desk. By this time some of the young engineer’s enthusiasm over the finding of the sloop had begun to cool. He seemed, as he sat there, a different man, as with businesslike address he turned to the discussion of various important details connected with the work.
“Anything left of the old house, captain?” he asked, taking from the table a rough sketch of the new shanty to be built on the Ledge,—the one used while the artificial island was being built having been injured by the winter storms.
“Not much, sir: one side’s stove in an’ the roof’s smashed. Some o’ the men are in it now, gittin’ things in shape, but it’s purty rickety. I’m a-goin’ to put the new one here,”—his finger on the drawing,—“an’ I’m goin’ to make it o’ tongue-an’-grooved stuff an’ tar the roof to git it water-tight. Then I’ll hev some iron bands made with turnbuckles to go over the top timbers an’ fasten it all down in the stone-pile. Oh, we’ll git her so she’ll stay put when hell breaks loose some night down Montauk way!” and another hearty laugh rang out, shaking the captain’s brawny chest, as he rolled up the drawing and tucked it in the case for safety.