Chapter XI: At Setuckit Point

“And there she is!” said Captain Titcomb, standing beside Bradley in the bow of the _Lizzie_. “There she is, just where we left her. Here’s hopin’ she don’t quit till we want her to. Run along under her stern, Barney; tide’s goin’ out, but there’s water enough there.”

It was the morning of the second day following the securing of the wrecking contract. The _Lizzie_, with Bradley, the Captain, and Alvin Bearse aboard, had left the Orham wharf an hour or more before. They had stopped at the Point to pick up Peleg Myrick and Bill Taylor, the new hands, whose services the Captain had secured without much trouble. The only difficulty had been in persuading Mr. Myrick to leave Skeezicks at the shanty. This had been overcome, however, and the shivering pup, locked in the room that was Peleg’s sitting-room, dining-room and kitchen, had howled a sad farewell through the crack of the door. His master had left a liberal supply of food to console his pet, and had explained the situation thoroughly to the dog before locking him up.

“He feels kind of bad now,” said Peleg, looking sorrowfully back at the weather-beaten shanty, from which faint, muffled howls floated in dismal cadences, “but I’ve told him that I felt’s though I’d ought to take the job, and he’ll git over it by and by. Jest like a human, that dog is, jest exactly.”

They tried to persuade the weather prophet to leave his concertina behind, but that was a trifle too much; Peleg brought it with him, wrapped in an old sweater.

Barney ran the little wrecking schooner under the tilted stern of the _Ruth Ginn_, and Bradley sprang from the shrouds to the rail of the stranded craft. Then, one by one, all but Barney, who stayed behind to look after the _Lizzie_, they clambered aboard the wreck. Most of the hard pine boards that formed the deck-load were in place, having been lashed well and being out of the reach of the heaviest seas, which had spent their force on the stern and after portion of the vessel.

“So fur, so good,” observed the Captain, cheerfully. “Now, Alvin, you go below and see how things look there. Peleg, try her with the pumps; let’s see if she’s leakin’ much. Brad, come here and take a squint at this windlass.”

The patent windlass was in good condition, and so also, to their delight, was the donkey engine. Peleg, working manfully at the pump, reported that she had some water in her, but that it didn’t “seem to be gainin’ none.”

“That’s all right!” said the Captain. “If she ain’t a sieve, she’ll do. She’s plumb full of lumber and you can’t sink that. Barney!” he hailed, “run over into the deep water at the lee of the shoal there, and anchor. Then take the dory and come aboard; we want to git to work.”

Then Bradley got steam up in the donkey engine and the big anchor of the _Ruth Ginn_, attached to a heavy cable, was lowered carefully until its shank rested across the stern of the dory. To this main cable, near its middle, were spliced two others just as heavy; to each of these another anchor was made fast. The dories were rowed out almost at a right angle from the wreck into the deep water. Then the anchors were thrown overboard and a three-fingered iron hand, with its spread talons deep in the sand, held the lumber schooner fast.

“Now, Brad,” commanded the Captain, “haul that line taut.”

Bradley started his engine, the windlass turned, and the cable, that had hung loose from the bow of the wreck, lifted from the water and tightened till it groaned.

“All she’ll stand, is it?” asked the skipper. “Good! make her fast. They say tide’ll wait for no man, so I guess we’ll have to do the next best thing and wait for the tide. Now boys!” as the men climbed aboard from the dories, “git to work and strip her.”

It is always the tide at Setuckit. The tide, tearing around the Point, day after day, year after year, has scoured out the narrow ship channel and piled up the shoals. The tide, catching the unwary coasting vessel or homeward-bound ship driven into its clutches by its ally the on-shore gale, coaxes the struggling victim in, little by little, until, all at once, it grips her in triumph and throws her bodily upon the soft, treacherous sand bars. And there, unless the wreckers come to the rescue, she lies until the next storm, when wind and tide tear her into fragments and leave nothing but a sunken, ragged hulk to be blown up, eventually, by the men employed by the government to keep the ocean highways clear.

But, curiously enough, the same tide that forces the vessels on the shoals is the wreckers’ greatest aid in getting them afloat again. A steam tug is rarely of much use in these waters. No pull that these stout little workers can give is sufficient to start a heavy craft with its keel deeply buried in the sand. Anchors and cables, and the tide, do the business, if it is done at all.

Bradley and the Captain knew that they could not hope to get out all the lumber in the hold of the _Ruth Ginn_ if she was allowed to lie in her present exposed position. One more gale and she would be almost certain to break up. Their hope was to lighten her by getting rid of her deck load and to work her off the shoal into deep water and then tow her up to Orham harbor, where she could be unloaded at their leisure.

She lay almost broadside to the shoal, but not quite. Her bow was well up on the sand, but her stern overhung the edge of the Boneyard, which, on that side, was, as Captain Titcomb said, “steep as the back of a barn.” The cable, tight as the steam windlass could draw it, led off from her bow to the spot where the anchors were planted under many fathoms of water. Where the tide turned, its pressure against the schooner would bring her to bear on the cable with a tremendous pull. The waves, growing larger as the water deepened, should, if their plan was a good one, loosen her keel in the sand, and every inch she gave the cable would retain. The more she loosened, the easier she would move. The slack thus made in the cable would be taken up by the windlass. She might gain but a foot a day for awhile, but, some day or other, if the weather held fair, she would have worked herself through the sand and clear of the shoal.

They stripped her, cutting away her tangled ropes and sails and taking them aboard the _Lizzie_. Everything movable, except of course the lumber, they transferred thus or threw overboard. It was a hard job and took them all day. Bradley was a tired man when he reached home that night, but he had to answer countless questions put to him by the interested “old maids.” He saw Gus for a moment or two and reported progress. Then he went to bed.

Next morning was clear and calm and they were delighted to find that the wrecked schooner had gained a little and that the cable was slacker than they left it. They tightened it again, with the windlass, and then set to work throwing overboard the lumber on the deck. They rigged a tackle on the stump of the foremast and, with the donkey engine, swung great bundles of the planks overboard, while Alvin and Barney, standing on the floating timber, with the water swashing around the knees of their fishermen’s boots, made it into rafts to be towed up to Orham.

Here it was that the partners appreciated the lack of an engine on the _Lizzie_.

“I tell you one thing, Brad!” exclaimed the Captain, pausing to cut a splinter from his thumb with an enormous jackknife which had seen years of service, “if we make good on a few more jobs like this, we’ll have a new schooner built for us if we have to run in debt for it till we can’t touch bottom. This pitchin’ hay with a two-tined table-fork ain’t my style.”

That night they hired Ira Sparrow’s fishing boat, the _You and I_, to tow the lumber rafts. She was a stout little craft with a naphtha engine, and, although not nearly so efficient as a tug, did the work after a fashion and was far and away cheaper. By hiring her they added Ira to their force.

For eight days they labored steadily; except on Sunday, when they merely sailed down to take up the slack on the cable. The lumber on the deck had been rafted to Orham and they had begun to get out that in the hold. The _Ruth Ginn_ was moving slowly through the sand and every day showed more and more gain. The partners were in high spirits.

“She’s a-comin’, Brad! she’s a-comin’!” exulted Captain Titcomb. “Peleg says clear and fine for a fortni’t yit. We’ve got out enough now to pay expenses, but that don’t count. What we’re after is to git it all, and, if somethin’ don’t bust, we’ll do it.”

The whole town was interested in the work. Bradley was waylaid by dozens of people every night. The prophets of calamity had already begun to hedge, although, of course, they were agreed that, if success did come, it would do so because the partners were lucky and had had good weather. “Ez Titcomb and a fool for luck,” was the way Captain Jabez Bailey put it.

The old maids grew more exultant with every evening’s report.

“Ain’t it splendid, Prissy?” Miss Tempy would cry, clapping her hands and waving the dishcloth. “How much did you make to-day, Bradley?”

Gus was just as much pleased, but more philosophical.

“I knew you’d win, Brad,” she said.

The sisters were very anxious to see how the work was done.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Miss Tempy. “I’d give anything to be down at the Point and watch you work. Seems’s if I _must_ go!”

“You wouldn’t be able to see much without a glass,” was Bradley’s answer. “We’re a mile and a half off the Point.”

“Father’s glass is up garret. Oh, Brad! _can’t_ we go?”

They were so eager and the weather was so warm and pleasant that Bradley began to think it might be possible to arrange for a picnic at the Point. He hesitated about suggesting it to the Captain, however, because he was not quite sure how the latter would like spending a day with the ladies whom he had so unceremoniously dropped from his visiting list. But his first hint was received with great cordiality.

“Sure thing!” said Captain Titcomb. “Mighty good idea, Brad. I ain’t been to a beach picnic for I don’t know when. Let’s see; who’ll we ask? The old maids, of course; and Gusty Baker, maybe--what do you think about havin’ her, Brad? Oh! all right; you needn’t look at me like that. And p’raps Eri Hedge and Perez Ryder and Cap’n Jerry might come. They’d be comp’ny for Prissy and Tempy. Eri’s a great feller to train and carry on and he’d enjoy a cruise like this. Then we ought to have some girls to be comp’ny for Gusty. She won’t want to hang ’round the beach all day and do nothin’ but squint through a spyglass at you, so don’t flatter yourself she will. Might ask Georgiana Bailey, so’s to give tone to the outfit? No? Well, I don’t care much for high society, myself. How about that Hopkins girl--Clara, seems to me her name was?”

So the excursion was decided upon for the very next day, and that evening Bradley went about issuing invitations. He kept closely to the Captain’s list and Perez Ryder was the only one of those suggested who felt obliged to decline. Captain Perez was caretaker at a big summer house on the “cliff road” and, as the family was coming from the city in a day or so, there were preparations to be made.

“Peleg said good weather for to-day,” declared Captain Titcomb next morning, when laden with baskets and boxes, the excursion party gathered at the wharf. “Thinks I, ‘My son, you don’t know what you’re prophesyin’ against: if a picnic can’t raise a shower then nothin’ will.’ But here ’tis, fine as a fiddle, spite of the handicap. No use talkin’, Peleg’s got the Old Farmer’s Almanac beat a mile. Land sake, Prissy! what you got in that clothes basket?”

“’Taint a clothes basket, Cap’n Ezra. How you do talk! It’s jest a plain lunch basket, and there’s things to eat in it, if you must know.”

“Things to _eat_! Say, Brad, you didn’t invite this crowd for a week’s cruise, did you? There’s enough in that basket to vittle a man-o’-war. And Tempy’s got one too! What’s that other thing you’ve got, Tempy--a spyglass?”

“Yes; one that b’longed to father. We’re goin’ to watch you and Bradley at work on the wreck.”

“Crimus_tee_! Did you hear that, Brad? You’ve got to behave yourself to-day. No drinkin’ out of the jug, and then chasin’ Peleg with a hatchet; you’ve got to keep sober.”

And, winking at Captain Eri, who was silently enjoying Miss Tempy’s horrified expression, the Captain led the way aboard the _Lizzie_.

They had a fair wind down and the sail was a jolly one. Arriving at the Point, they landed the visitors, and picked up Bill Taylor and Mr. Myrick. Miss Tempy begged to be allowed to stay on board and go off with them to the wreck, but the Captain wouldn’t hear of it.

“Last time I took a woman out back of the P’int here,” he said, “was over ten years ago. She was a minister’s wife and her husband was with her. We was tryin’ for bluefish, and when he’d heave his line she’d screech like a foghorn and beg of him not to git drownded for _her_ sake. Way I looked at it, she was his best excuse for wantin’ to _be_ drownded. Well, we got out where ’twas pretty rugged, and every time the boat rolled she’d jump and hold out her arms to me like she was goin’ to grab me ’round the neck. Bein’ a bashful man, I pretty nigh had heart disease ’fore we got ashore. ’Course you wouldn’t do nothin’ like that, Tempy, but----”

“The idea!” exclaimed Miss Tempy, turning very red.

“Reminds me of a woman I took out sailin’ once,” observed Captain Eri. “She kept sayin’ she was havin’ an ‘adorable time,’ and when ’twan’t that ’twas, ‘Oh, Cap’n Hedge! are you _sure_ it’s perfectly safe?’ or ‘Cap’n, you’re sartin you know how to handle the boat, ain’t you?’ Fin’lly she looks down the centre-board well, throws up both hands and whoops, ‘I knew it! I knew it! we’re sinkin’! There’s a hole right through the bottom of the boat and it’s full of water!’”

So Miss Tempy gave up the idea of going off to the wreck and contented herself with the possession of the spyglass. Captain Eri and Captain Jerry, laden with the lunch baskets, led the way up to the big empty shanty that had sheltered thirty men in the old days when Point fishing was a paying industry, and the _Lizzie_, with the workers aboard, headed for the _Ruth Ginn_.

Ira Sparrow, in the _You and I_, was there already, and the “chug! chug!” of his naphtha engine was heard as he came rushing to meet them.

“Brad! Cap’n Ez!” he hailed, as soon as they were in shouting distance. “She’s shifted like time in the night! I swan, I b’lieve we can git her off this tide!”

This was such unexpected good news, for they had figured on another week at least, that the partners could scarcely believe it.

“Are you sure?” shouted Bradley, leaning over the _Lizzie’s_ bow.

“Pretty nigh sure. Look for yourself.”

They shot up to the wreck, to find the cable, that had been left tight and rigid, hanging loose. An inexperienced eye could see that the lumber schooner had changed her position. Her bow was now almost in a line with the edge of the shoal and, even in the slack water of the last of the ebb, she was rocking appreciably in the cradle her hull had made in the sand beneath it.

“Great scissors to grind!” shouted Captain Titcomb. “She’ll do it as sure as I’m a foot high! Tumble aboard there, boys! lively!”

They clambered up the side and fell to work like sharks around a dead whale. Bradley got up steam in the donkey engine. As soon as possible they started the windlass and hauled the cable taut.

“She feels it, boy; she feels it!” cried the Captain. “Give it to her! every pound she’ll stand. Now, then,” he added, “while we’re waitin’ for the tide to turn we might’s well roust out a little more of the cargo. No use to lay back and let Providence do it all. The Lord helps them that helps themselves, as the darkey said when he found the hen-house door unlocked. Hatches off, men! dive into it there!”

They rigged the blocks and tackle and began swinging bundles of mahogany strips from the hold and over the side. The tide turned and the water on the shoal grew deeper. The _Ruth Ginn_ rocked in her sand cradle; every little while they hove taut on the cable in order to take up every inch of slack.

It was exhilarating, exciting work, this fight with old ocean, and Bradley and the Captain gloried in the sheer joy of it. They were winning, and winning not only a goodly sum of money, but the first big prize that would demonstrate their ability to carry through larger and more important contracts. The forenoon passed.

“They expected us ashore for dinner long ago,” panted the skipper, standing by the hatch, his coat and cap off and the wind blowing his hair this way and that; “but they’ll have to take it out in expectin’. I wouldn’t quit now if the Pres’dent of the United States was waitin’ for me and the turkey gittin’ cold; hey, Brad?”

“I should say not!” replied the junior partner, his eyes snapping. “What’s that? Didn’t she move then?”

“Cap’n Ez!” bellowed Ira, from the _You and I_. “She’s movin’! come up on your cable.”

The Captain jumped to the windlass and Bradley to his engine. The cable tightened, and slowly, inch by inch, wound back over the windlass barrel. From beneath the _Ruth Ginn_ came a sliding, grating sound, the most welcome sound in the world to the wreckers. Bearse, picking up a heavy coil of rope from the deck, tossed it to Ira.

“That’s the stuff, Alvin!” roared the Captain, approvingly. “Make it fast in the bows. Now, Ira! put your power onto that line.”

The _You and I_ leaped out into deep water and, with her naphtha engine coughing furiously, pulled doggedly at the new tow line. The grating under the keel of the lumber schooner grew louder; she quivered from stem to stern. The cable crept inboard faster and faster.

Then there came a shake, a roll that caused Mr. Myrick to lose his footing and tumble into the scuppers, and, with a triumphant wallow, the _Ruth Ginn_ slid off the shoal. And from her deck, and from that of the _You and I_, went up a yell that scared the gulls fishing away over on the Razorback.

They drew her into the channel, well out of danger, and anchored her firmly, bow and stern.

“There!” said the Captain, triumphantly. “She’ll stay there till we can get a tug from Vineyard Haven. We’ll go ashore and telephone from the life-saving station for one this minute. No more work to-day, boys. They’re waitin’ dinner for us, and we’ve earned it.”

That the good news was already known on the beach was plain. On the roof of the big shanty someone--it was Captain Eri--was seated, waving a flag made of a coat tied to a weir pole. As the _Lizzie_ and the _You and I_ ran into the cove the picnic party came hurrying to meet them.

“Now then!” shouted Captain Jerry, waving his hat; “three cheers for the wreckers! Hooray!”

And Miss Tempy’s handkerchief sailed off on the breeze as she let go of it in her excitement.

The Captain ran up to the life-saving station to telephone to Sam Hardy an order to wire Vineyard Haven to send a tug at once. When he came back dinner was ready.

It was a tiptop shore dinner; baked clams, clam chowder, fried plaice-fish, and all the pies, apple puffs and cake that had filled the lunch baskets. Bradley was too excited to eat much and the old maids were a little worried in consequence.

While the ladies washed the dishes the men smoked and spun yarns. It was after three o’clock when they finished. Then they dragged Peleg Myrick into the shanty and made him play the concertina, while they danced “Hull’s Victory,” “Speed the Plough,” and the ever popular “Virginia Reel.” There were not partners enough to go around, so some of the men danced together. Captain Titcomb, in his rubber boots, offered his arm with a flourish to Captain Eri and the “cuts” and “double shuffles” that the two shellbacks introduced into that reel were wonderful, although they very nearly broke up the dance.

“We won’t have supper till seven o’clock,” announced Captain Titcomb. “Come on, girls and boys! who wants to go over to the lighthouse?”

They all did, or nearly all; Gus was standing by the back window, looking at the sea, and she did not reply.

“Ain’t Brad goin’?” asked Miss Prissy anxiously, turning as she was about to leave the shanty, with Captain Jerry as her escort.

“Leave Brad alone a minute,” called Captain Titcomb, who was walking with Clara Hopkins. “He wants to git his bearin’s, I guess. You women folks have pretty nigh talked his head off. He’ll be along pretty soon.”

They went away and Bradley, for the first time, was alone with Gus. The old maids had given him no chance to do more than speak the barest word with her before, and now that he had the opportunity, he was almost afraid to begin. She must have known that he was there, but she did not turn her head.

The silence was very awkward. Bradley broke it, after what seemed a long time.

“Gus,” he said.

She turned then, and, after glancing at his face, spoke hurriedly.

“Oh!” she exclaimed; “they’ve gone and left us. Come; let’s catch them!”

But he stopped her before she reached the door.

“Gus,” he said, seizing her hand and holding it; “haven’t you got anything to say to me?”

She did not look at him. “What shall I say?” she asked. “What do you want me to say?”

“Why, I thought you’d be glad that I’ve got the schooner off. I thought you’d say--the others said----”

“I _am_ glad, very glad. And very proud. But I knew you would succeed. Hadn’t we better go?”

But he would not let her go.

“I hoped you’d say more than that,” he said, disappointedly. “I was dreadfully blue the other night when Sam was there. I thought that, after all, perhaps I was making a fool of myself in giving up the city and trying to win out down here. It looked so small beside the great jobs Sam talked about. But when you spoke to me on the steps and told me you believed in me, it all changed, and I swore to myself that I _would_ win, because you wanted me to. Gus, do you really care? Are you really glad?”

Then she turned to him and he saw that her eyes were wet.

“What do you want me to say?” she whispered. “That I am more glad than I’ve ever been in my life before, and so proud of you, _so_ proud because you were brave enough to make your fight and win it in the face of the whole village? And so ashamed of myself because I didn’t encourage you as I ought when you first told me? I can say all that, Brad, and truly mean it.”

“But Gus--oh! it’s no use! that isn’t enough. I haven’t got any money, and I’ve only begun in my work, and I may fail, after all; but Gus, will you wait for me? Do you care enough for me to wait and hope with me, and marry me some day when I really win? Do you?”

He held her hand in both of his and waited, breathless, for the answer. But she did not give it; instead she looked at the window and through it at the sand dunes and waving beach grass and the blue sea beyond. And Bradley, gazing at her face, saw the tears overflow her eyelids and roll down her cheeks.

He turned white, and a great dread came over him. “Gus, don’t you--_can’t_ you care for me?” he begged.

And then she turned, and, leaning her head upon his shoulder, cried heartily and without restraint. “Why did you ask me? Why _did_ you?” she sobbed.

“Because I had to. Gus, don’t you love me?”

“Oh, Brad! I don’t know. I think I do, but I’m not certain. I’m very, very proud of you, and I believe in you, but, oh, dear! I’m afraid of myself. I’m afraid of my temper; afraid I may change; afraid I don’t really love you as much as I ought to.”

“There isn’t anyone else, is there?”

She smiled, tearfully. “No, Brad, there isn’t anyone else.”

“Then won’t you try to say yes? Perhaps you’ll learn to care for me. Won’t you say yes, and try, dear?”

“Do you want me to say it, now that you understand just how I feel?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to take me just as I am--liking you better than anybody else in the world, but not--perhaps, not really loving you as it seems to me a girl ought to love the man who is going to marry her?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a queer girl, Brad. Grandma says I’m like her best china teacups--I must be handled carefully or there’ll be a smash. I guess that’s so. I don’t trust myself; I change my mind five times a day. Do you want me to say yes, in spite of all this?”

“I do.”

“Then I _will_ say it; and I will try to be what you would like to have me.”

He bent his head and kissed her, and just then came a thunderous knock on the door.

“Brad,” whispered Captain Titcomb, through the crack; “are you there? I’ve come back after Tempy’s spyglass. Git it for me, will you? Maybe you’d better hurry,” he added, with a suppressed chuckle. “She’ll be here in a minute, herself.”

The spyglass was handed out in a jiffy.