“I kind’er wish Cap’n Joe had come ashore to-night,” Caleb said, turning to Captain Brandt, who stood beside him, his hand on the tiller. “He’s been soakin’ wet all day, an’ he won’t put nothin’ dry on ef I ain’t with him. ’T warn’t for Betty I’d ’a’ stayed, but the little gal’s so lonesome ’t ain’t right to leave her. I don’ know what Lacey ’d done but for Betty. Did ye see ’er, Lonny, when she come in that night?” All the little by-paths of Caleb’s talk led to Betty.
It was the same old question, but Lonny, seated on the other side of the deck, fell in willingly with Caleb’s mood.
“See ’er? Wall, I guess! I thought she’d keel over when the doctor washed Billy’s face. He did look ragged, an’ no mistake, Caleb; but she held on an’ never give in a mite.”
Carleton sat close enough to overhear the remark.
“Why shouldn’t she?” he sneered, behind his hand, to the man next him. “Lacey’s a blamed sight better looking fellow than what she’s got. The girl knows a good thing when she sees it. If it was me, I’d”—
He never finished the sentence. Caleb overheard the remark, and rose from his seat, with an expression in his eyes that could not be misunderstood. Sanford, watching the group through the cabin window, and not knowing the cause of Caleb’s sudden anger, said afterwards that the diver looked like an old gray wolf gathering himself for a spring, as he stood over Carleton with hands tightly clinched.
The superintendent made some sort of half apology to Caleb, and the diver took his seat again, but did not forgive him; neither did the older men, who had seen Betty grow up, and who always spoke of her somehow as if she belonged to them.
“T’ain’t decent,” said Lonny Bowles to Sanford when he had joined him later in the cabin of the Screamer and had repeated Carleton’s remark, “for a man to speak agin a woman; such fellers ain’t no better ’n rattlesnakes an’ ought’er be trompled on, if they is in guv’ment pay.”
When the sloop reached Keyport harbor, the men were landed as near as possible to their several homes. Caleb, in his kindly voice, bade good-night to Sanford, to Captain Brandt, to the crew, and to the working gang. To Carleton he said nothing. He would have overlooked and forgotten an affront put upon himself, but never one upon Betty.
“She ain’t got nobody but an ol’ feller like me,” he often said to Captain Joe,—“no chillen nor nothin’, poor little gal. I got to make it up to her some way.”